AZ was selected to be one of only six states to participate in a new national initiative to help preschools to adopt evidence-based practices in nutrition, breastfeeding support, physical activity, and “screen time” policies and practices. The project begins this month when a company called Nemours (that’s who’s been hired by the CDC) begins establishing and training state teams to lead preschool quality improvement learning collaboratives. Nemours will provide ongoing technical assistance for participating child care providers, and provide access to tools, resources, materials, and curricula. This nicely augments and complements the training and technical assistance we provide through our Empower standards.
We’ll be notifying the other major partner agencies that will be involved in this and provided letters of support next week like First Things First. I suspect it was the Empower Program that brought us this national recognition. Jeanette Shea and Sheila Sjolander had presented Empower on a panel with Nemours at an Association of Maternal and Child Health Program conference a couple of years ago. Congratulation to our entire Empower team!
