Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The early years of life are critical for lifelong health. Sadly, many Canadian preschoolers do not meet national dietary recommendations for vegetables and fruit while frequently consuming foods of little nutritional value. In 2016, the BC government and partners developed a capacity-building intervention to support the implementation of recommended practices encouraging physical activity and healthy eating in childcare settings. Research is underway to evaluate whether this intervention has improved childcare's policies and practices around children's physical activity. My research will expand the focus to healthy eating and add indicators to the assessments already underway and proposed. My specific aims are to: 1) define the factors (individual, childcare settings and regional) that facilitate or hinder full implementation of these new recommendations ; 2) assess whether the provincial intervention changed childcare providers' nutrition policies and practices; and 3) evaluate whether children aged 3-5 years attending childcare centres that adhere to these recommendations have healthier dietary behaviours and lower nutritional risk scores compared to children attending childcare centres that do not adhere to these recommendations. These aims will be met by: 1) conducting 60 min interviews with childcare providers to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors that influence the implementation of these new recommended practices; 2) analyzing data from province-wide surveys to examine longitudinal change in childcare providers' healthy eating policies and practices; 3) collecting child-level dietary data using the Nutrition Screening Tool for Every Preschooler (NutriSTEP®). My findings will provide invaluable information about the food environments and dietary behaviours children in childcare settings and help decision makers tailor approaches in the early years.