Development of an online curriculum for California early care and education providers on healthy beverages

Kimberly Hazard,Lorrene Ritchie,Roberta Rose,Kaela Plank,Abbey Alkon,Danielle Lee,L Karina Díaz Rios

doi:10.1186/s12889-021-11428-x

Abstract

BackgroundChildren’s consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with obesity, diabetes, and dental decay. California’s Healthy Beverages in Child Care Act (AB 2084) requires all licensed child care centers and family child care homes to comply with healthy beverages standards, however many licensed providers in California are unaware of the law and few are fully compliant with the law’s requirements. The aim of the current project is to describe the development of a self-paced online training on best practices and implementation of AB 2084 in English and Spanish for family child care home and child care center providers; and to evaluate the feasibility, defined as being accessible, acceptable, and satisfactory to providers, of this new online course.MethodsThe project was broken into two main stages: (1) development of the online course; and (2) evaluation of the final online course. The first stage was completed in five phases: (1) identify relevant course content and develop narration script; (2) conduct in-person focus groups with child care providers to review and edit the content; (3) adapt course content and translate for Spanish-speaking providers; (4) build the online course and resources; and (5) pilot online course and evaluate accessibility. The second stage, evaluation of the acceptability and satisfaction of the final course was rated on a Likert scale from 1 to 4; the evaluation was completed as part of a larger randomized control trial with 43 child care providers. The course features four key requirements of AB 2084 as the main sections of the course (milk, sweetened beverages, juice, and water), plus background information about beverages and children’s health, special topics including caring for children with special needs, family engagement, written policies, and child engagement.ResultsThe child care providers who completed the evaluation found the online training was easily understandable (median(Q1,Q3,IQR) = 4 (4,4,0)), included new information (3 (1, 3, 4)), provided useful resources (4(4,4,0)), and was rated with high overall satisfaction (3 (1, 3, 4)).ConclusionOnline training in English and Spanish designed for child care providers is a feasible medium to deliver important health messages to child care providers in an accessible, acceptable, and satisfactory manner.

Highlights

There is substantial evidence that young children who consume sugar-sweetened beverages have an increased risk of childhood overweight/obesity and dental caries [1]
This paper reports on the development of a self-paced, online training on best practices for children’s healthy beverage consumption in child care programs, available in English or Spanish; and evaluation of the feasibility, defined as being accessible, acceptable, and satisfactory to providers of the final online training
Offering online trainings may be advantageous to the agencies that provide trainings to child care providers as well, eliminating the cost associated with in-person trainings, including hiring one or several expert trainers

Summary

Introduction

There is substantial evidence that young children who consume sugar-sweetened beverages have an increased risk of childhood overweight/obesity and dental caries [1]. To address the high prevalence of obesity, California passed the Healthy Beverages in Child Care Act (AB 2084), which was implemented in 2012 [3] This law requires all licensed child care facilities to make clean and safe drinking water readily available and accessible for children to drink throughout the day, serve no more than one serving (4 oz / 0.11 kg) per day of 100% juice, serve only unflavored, low-fat (1%) milk or nonfat (skim) milk to children two years of age or older, and prohibits serving beverages with added natural or artificial sweeteners. The aim of the current project is to describe the development of a self-paced online training on best practices and implementation of AB 2084 in English and Spanish for family child care home and child care center providers; and to evaluate the feasibility, defined as being accessible, acceptable, and satisfactory to providers, of this new online course

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