Purpose: The development of health behaviours (physical activity, food and feeding) begins in early childhood (0-5 years), and community resources such as library times, play groups, and other non-enrolled programs are underutilized to support parental knowledge and confidence in child health behaviours. Community leaders in these services may lack training to facilitate parent knowledge and confidence in physical activity or food and feeding. The purpose of this study was to pilot an online train-the-trainer program in physical activity, physical literacy, and food and feeding for community leaders in parent and family support (e.g. family support workers, librarians, parent group facilitators) to determine capacity to improve community knowledge and confidence in educating parents about these topics.

Methods: We recruited community leaders from across British Columbia Canada, who work regularly with families to pilot an online facilitator training to increase their knowledge and confidence in educating parents on physical activity, physical literacy, and food and feeding. Community leaders pre- and post-training surveys to capture their knowledge and confidence in these health behaviours. The intervention consisted of a 5-hour online, self-paced modules on the topics of facilitating workshops, physical activity and physical literacy, risky play, games and activities, food literacy, positive mealtimes, and meal planning.

Results/findings: Community leaders (n=30, all female, mean age= 43.5 years) had significant increases in knowledge (p<0.001) and confidence (p=0.009) in physical activity and physical literacy and knowledge (p<0.001) and confidence (p<0.001) in food and feeding. Participant satisfaction with content was high (mean=4.17/5) and participants reported that content was useful to them (mean=4.10/5).

Conclusions: Using an online portal to train community leaders to support parents in adopting evidence-based physical activity, physical literacy, and food and feeding practices shows promise in improving community leader knowledge and confidence in these areas. Continued research is needed to understand behaviour change at the parent level, and to determine effectiveness of scaling-up the training.

Laitinen A. (corresponding author), Talvia S., Karhunen L. and Tilles-Tirkkonen T.

Purpose: Implementing food education as routine school activity poses a challenge, particularly as current classroom teacher training lacks education on food topics. In primary schools, food education emerges sporadically, most often only as part of a school meal, while its various dimensions may go unrecognized. In our previous study learning objectives and 14 themes for food education were defined by food education experts. That work provides a theoretical basis for evaluating and assessing its comprehensive content areas. This study aims to investigate which of these content areas have an important role in the pre-service classroom teachers’ perceptions of food education.

Methods: Seventy-six pre-service classroom teachers at the final stage of their studies engaged in empathy-based storytelling. Twelve of them participated also in research interviews and constitute the participants of the current study. Participants wrote short stories envisioning themselves as food educators in a school setting. Subsequently, research interviews were conducted using co-research approach to discuss preliminary findings of the stories. Transcribed interviews underwent deductive qualitative content analysis.

Results/findings: Participants described various aspects of food education, including personal (‘Values and attitudes’), practical (‘Eating’, ‘Food choice’), and intangible themes (‘Health and well-being’, ‘Culture’). Instead, intangible themes, like ‘media’, and ‘nature’ as well as a practical theme called ‘food preparation’ received limited attention.

Conclusions: Not all food education themes defined by food education experts emerge clearly in the pre-service classroom teachers’ perceptions of food education. In particular, the importance of the themes ‘food preparation’, ‘media’ and ‘nature’ should be highlighted more in teacher training in the future.

Title
The feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a potentially scalable physical activity program in New Zealand Early Childhood Education: A pilot cluster-randomized controlled trial.

Purpose
Many New Zealand (NZ) preschoolers are not meeting physical activity (PA) recommendations and are spending much of their day in sedentary behavior. There is an urgent need for high-quality PA interventions that are effective in dynamic and complex preschool settings, as this is where children spend much of their time. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a teacher-delivered PA program designed for Ministry of Education-licensed early childhood education (ECE) centers.

Method:
Four ECE settings volunteered to participate, inclusive of 46 children (3.9 ± 0.5 y, M = 22, F = 24), and 22 teachers, randomized to either intervention or control. Intervention ECE teachers participated in online professional learning on the movement-active-physical-play (MAPP) framework including six 30-minute webinars, readings, and activity videos. MAPP was designed to provide clear instruction about how to deliver daily quality physical activity in an ECE setting. The intervention teachers then delivered MAPP for ten weeks in their centers. The control ECE teachers continued with their usual PA curriculum. Intervention fidelity was assessed by direct observation, and program satisfaction was assessed via teacher and child interviews. Preliminary efficacy (primary outcome: time in moderate-to-vigorous-physical-activity) was quantified using wrist-worn accelerometry and analyzed using generalized linear mixed models.

Results:
In total, 80% of the MAPP activity sessions were delivered and one observation was carried out at each intervention ECE, where it was noted that teachers delivered high-quality MAPP activity sessions. Intervention ECE teachers and children reported high levels of satisfaction with MAPP and a general intention to utilize the program in the future. Accelerometer data revealed a counterintuitive increase in sedentary behavior (189 min) for the intervention group when compared to the control group (P < 0.050). Other interesting but non-significant trends were observed; for example, the intervention increased MVPA in girls by 53 min and decreased MVPA in boys by 30 min (P = 0.065).

Conclusion:
The delivery of MAPP was feasible and high levels of satisfaction were reported by participants. Preliminary findings indicated that there is potential for MAPP to impact activity behaviors, and hence a larger study in NZ ECE of the MAPP program is warranted.

Background: To promote the physical, social, and emotional health of children at the population level, strategies designed to improve the health and well-being of their caregivers are desperately needed. Childcare and Early Childhood Educator’s (ECE) nutrition and physical activity behaviors are associated with and influence nutrition behaviors of children in their care. ECEs are among the lowest paying jobs in the US and are at risk of food insecurity, poor eating habits, and physical inactivity. Workplace wellness programs (WWP) may be one strategy to improve the job satisfaction, staff turnover, and health of ECEs, in addition to reducing health care costs for employers. Despite growing evidence, few effective WWPs are available for ECEs.

Methods: In April 2023 a nationally representative survey of Head Start (HS) providers was conducted. HS is the largest federally funded ECE program in the United States, employing over 225,000 staff and educators and reaching over 800,00 families. HS educators were recruited via (a) an email from Program Directors listed in the 2021-2022 Head Start Program Report and (b) direct email to a list of National Head Start Association members. In a three-week period, 2,611 educators from all 50 states completed the survey. Descriptive and multivariate regression analyses were performed to assess availability, participation, and interest in WWP.

Findings: About 71% of educators had access to at least one WWP, the top three programs were general health education and promotion, stress management, and healthy lunch and snacks. Among those with access to WWP, 72% participated in at least one program, with highest participation in general health and education programs followed by nutrition related programs. Among the 28% without WWP access, 98% expressed interest in one or more programs, the top three programs of interest were access to healthy lunch and snack options physical activity, and stress management.
Conclusions: WWPs are offered to three-quarters of HS educators nationwide with varying rates of participation by program type. Additionally, interest in WWP not offered remains high. Findings will inform the design and implementation of a pilot RCT in Boston examining ways to improve participation in a health and wellness WWP.

Background: The application of compositional data analysis (CoDA) is emerging in the field of movement behavior epidemiology. The job demands of preschool teachers and rates of negative health outcomes lend reason to closely investigate their compositional movement behavior; however, currently no research exists. The purpose of this study was to assess preschool teachers’ movement compositions within and out of work and compare by teachers’ work status (part-time vs. full-time) and self-reported exercise (exercisers vs. non-exercisers) using CoDA.

Method: Preschool teachers (N = 34) were instructed to wear an ActiGraph GT9x accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist and complete an activity log for one week. Raw accelerometer counts were processed and transformed into five movement thresholds (sedentary, inactivity, light physical activity [LPA], moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA], and MVPA bouts). Previously validated CoDA methods (MANOVA) for 24-hour movement behaviors were used (Gupta et al., 2018). If 95% Confidence Intervals, illustrated by interval plots, didn't contain zero this represented possible significant differences in movement thresholds between groups.

Results: Significant differences in movement composition were found between full- and part-time teachers within work (p=0.077), and between exerciser and non-exerciser groups outside of work (p=0.008). No significant differences were found by work status outside of work, and by exercise group within work. Full-time teachers spent a greater proportion of their time at work sedentary whereas part-time teachers were found to be more proportionally inactive and accumulate more LPA at work. Exercisers were found to have a greater proportion of time spent in LPA and MVPA bouts outside of work compared to non-exerciser teachers.

Conclusions: Differences in preschool teachers' daily movement seems to be dependent upon amount of time spent at work and performance of exercise. Part-time teachers may spend a lower proportion of their time at work being sedentary and spend more time on their feet engaged in LPA due to the quicker pace of a half-day preschool schedule. Future work should explore how movement composition within and out of work may predict certain health outcomes, and the association between teachers' movement composition and their promotion of positive movement behaviors to children.