White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity Releases National Action Plan Including Early Childhood Recommendations

The Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures (HKHF) goal of encouraging collaboration among the obesity prevention and early education fields to support healthy child development is gaining momentum. A key sign of your influence is the inclusion of recommendations for early childhood in the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity’s action plan, released yesterday. Your voices were heard and your work was recognized in grand scale!

In February, First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let’s Move! campaign to solve the childhood obesity epidemic within a generation. Concurrent with this effort, President Obama established the Task Force on Childhood Obesity to develop and implement an interagency plan that details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks, and outlines an action plan to end the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.

The HKHF community is extremely excited to see a set of recommendations for actions that can be taken very early in a child’s life, when the risk of obesity first emerges. Even further, the recommendations outlined in the Task Force Action Plan closely align with expert recommendations from the September HKHF conference.

The first of chapter of the action plan is Early Childhood. This chapter provides recommendations for reducing the risk of obesity in the early years of a child’s life, including: prenatal care, breastfeeding, chemical exposures, screen time and early care and education.

Specific recommendations pertaining to Early Care and Education include:

• The Federal government, incorporating input from health care providers and other stakeholders, should provide clear, actionable guidance to states, providers, and families on how to increase physical activity, improve nutrition, and reduce screen time in early child care settings.

• States should be encouraged to strengthen licensing standards and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems to support good program practices regarding nutrition, physical activity, and screen time in early education and child care settings.

• The Federal government should look for opportunities in all early childhood programs it funds (such as the Child and Adult Care Food Program at USDA, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, military child care, and Federal employee child care) to base policies and practices on current scientific evidence related to child nutrition and physical activity, and seek to improve access to these programs.

A benchmark for success as outlined by the Task Force is:

• Increased number of states will adopt more stringent licensing standards that include nutri­tion, physical activity, and screen time that align with Caring for our Children: National Health and Safety Performance Standards, 3rd edition and coordinate across systems with Pre-K, Head Start, and child care. New or enhanced data sources may be needed to monitor progress in this area.

No population could benefit more from Let’s Move! than our nation’s youngest children. As you know, child care settings provide a largely untapped opportunity to address the obesity epidemic, with the potential to impact the health of an entire population. The action plan highlighted several example of evidence-informed initiatives and interventions to combat obesity in early childhood settings, all of which were highlighted at the HKHF Conference:I am Moving, I am Learning; Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (NAP SACC); and Nemours’ multi-sector approach in Delaware.

The recommendations included in the action plan are concise and provide a clear path for federal, state and local leaders, both in the public and private sectors, to take action. As members of the Healthy Kids, Healthy Futures community, you have already greatly impacted the field by supporting changes that align with these recommendations. We encourage you to continue collaborating to move the field forward and look forward to reporting on the changes in the early care and education settings that support healthy eating and physical activity in our nation’s youngest children.

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