Together We Can Improve the Health of Louisiana Children

Building Partnerships for Healthier Early Care and Education Settings in Louisiana

Well-Ahead Louisiana works with providers and communities to support healthier early care and education settings through partnership development and technical assistance to ensure a healthy start to a healthy future.

Partnership Roundtable

Well-Ahead worked with early care and education professionals throughout the state in roundtable discussions determine ways to enhance obesity prevention strategies in Louisiana. The goal of the meetings was to determine how well obesity prevention standards and practices are embedded into our state’s early childhood systems and how we can strengthen state-level efforts.

As part of the discussions, participants looked for opportunities to develop and use the Centers for Disease Control’s Spectrum of Opportunities framework as a guide for enhancing obesity prevention practices and policies in early childhood.

Meeting Agendas and Presentations

State-Level Obesity Prevention Efforts

Well-Ahead worked with 14 child care centers throughout the state to participate in the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) Early Childhood Implementation training. Participating centers received the CATCH early childhood curriculum and physical activity kit.

In addition to the training, curriculum and physical activity kit, each child care center received in-depth technical assistance on implementing CATCH materials into their child care center. The technical assistance included in-person visits, emails, phone calls and support implementing best practices from Go NAPSACC.

CATCH Cohort Members


Let’s Be Healthy

Well-Ahead and the Louisiana Department of Education, Early Childhood partnered to create the Let’s Be Healthy grant opportunity for child care centers participating in CACFP. The goal of Let’s Be Healthy was to support child care centers in the implementation of nurturing healthy eaters and increasing physical activity through the Child Care Center WellSpot Designation program.

Child care centers selected to participate in Let’s Be Healthy received $1000 to implement early childhood obesity prevention practices on increasing physical activity or nurturing healthy eaters. In addition, they received in-depth, 1-on-1 technical assistance with a trained consultant and increased knowledge on research-based best practices from Go NAPSACC (Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care).

Statewide Early Childhood Education Meetings

The Louisiana Department of Education, Early Childhood provides bi-weekly newsletters for early childhood educators. The newsletters contain information on changes to guidelines affecting child care centers, upcoming meetings and webinars, events, resources, opportunities and deadlines that affect the early care and education community in Louisiana. To subscribe to the newsletter, click here.


Resources