Abstract
Early care and education (ECE) settings are important avenues for reaching young children and their families with food and nutrition resources, including through the U.S. federally funded Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey of ECE providers in two U.S. states in November 2020 to identify approaches used to connect families with food and nutrition resources amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds of sites reporting no approaches and adjusted Poisson models were used to estimate the incidence rate ratio of the mean number of approaches, comparing sites that participate in CACFP to those that did not. A total of 589 ECE sites provided responses. Of those, 43% (n = 255) participated in CACFP. CACFP participating sites were more likely to report using any approaches to connecting families to food resources and significantly more likely to report offering “grab and go” meals, providing meal delivery, distributing food boxes to families, and recommending community food resources than non-CACFP sites. This study suggests that CACFP sites may have greater capacity to connect families to food resources amid emergencies than non-CACFP participating sites.
Highlights
Care and education (ECE) sites, including child care centers, family child care homes, Head Starts, state or private preschools, nurseries, and childminders, are important settings for impacting nutrition and health behaviors in young children and reaching families with nutrition information [1,2,3,4]
There were some differences in program type distribution between Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) participating and non-participating sites, with more CACFP sites being family or group child care homes (33%, n = 83) than nonCACFP participating sites (13%, n = 44) and fewer CACFP sites being preschool programs
No studies that the authors are aware of have examined ECEE sites approaches to providing families with food and nutrition resources during the COVID-19 pandemic by CACFP status
Summary
Care and education (ECE) sites, including child care centers, family child care homes, Head Starts, state or private preschools, nurseries, and childminders, are important settings for impacting nutrition and health behaviors in young children and reaching families with nutrition information [1,2,3,4]. In the United States (U.S.), 60% of children under the age of 5 years regularly spend time in non-parental care, and those children spend an average of approximately 25 h per week in care [6]. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends that children in full-time care consume half to one-third of their daily calories in care, highlighting the importance of ECE sites as access point for healthy food for young children [7]. Reimbursable meals and snacks must meet specific nutrition standards and meal patterns, which were most recently updated in 2010 U.S legislation the Healthy
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