A look at USDA's Nutrition Education and Training Program

Food and Nutrition, Dec, 1992

The fourth video segment will be for parents, explaining why nutrition is important to the physical and psychological development of their children. It shows them they can reinforce their children's learning by repeating at home the same nutrition messages the youngsters hear at child care.

Training for child care personnel will be coordinated with the pre-kindergarten program in the state department of education. Through a new NET grant, Extension specialists will introduce the second edition of the preschool curriculum to educators in child care programs and in the public schools that have programs for 3- and 4-year-old children eligible for free and reduced-price school meals.

Will be available to other states

Florida's new nutrition education curriculum will be made available to other state NET coordinators. It will be in the form of Word Perfect 5.1 computer disk sets, as well as in camera-ready copy.

Florida NET coordinator Carol Frazee will also provide three complete sets to the Food and Nutrition Information Center at the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, for loan to people working with USDA food programs.

Project director Doris Tichenor, director of the home economics program in Cooperative Extension at the University of Florida, is pleased with the way Extension and NET work together in her state.

"We have an excellent working relationship," she says. "In fact, because of Carol Frazee's strong commitment to nutrition education and her support of Extension programs, the Florida Association of Extension Home Economists chose Carol to receive their 1991 Friend of Extension Award.

"We hope our experiences will be helpful in encouraging agencies in other states to join together," she adds.

ECELS project also gets NET support

Another example of teamwork in action is the way Pennsylvania's NET staff have helped with a project called ECELS, which stands for Early Childhood Education Linkage System. As its name suggests, ECELS links public and private health resources with educational programs serving young children.

Through the project, experts in pediatrics, public health, dentistry, mental health, and nutrition provide consultation, training, and technical assistance to preschool teachers and directors, as well as to groups of children and their parents.

The project got its start 2 years ago when the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics received funds for it from the U.S. Public Health Service and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The need for such a project was clear. More than 250,000 infants, toddlers, and preschool children in Pennsylvania attend the approximately 9,000 regulated child care facilities in the state. These facilities--including child care centers, Head Start programs, family day care homes, group homes and nursery schools--serve roughly 35 percent of the early childhood population in Pennsylvania.

Before ECELS, many of these early childhood programs had been operating with little or no input from health professionals. Now, through the project, each of the 9,000 child care settings has access to a hotline of experts, a newsletter called Health Link, and a resource library.