When it comes to the battle of the obesity epidemic, Arizona is doing better than many states, but obesity rates here and across the country are still alarmingly high. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 29.5% of Arizona adults are obese, ranking our state 30th in the nation. This year’s Arizona obesity [...]
September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month and I am pleased to announce that we’ve seen the number of overweight or obese children decrease among our preschool children in the Arizona WIC Program from one in three to one in four. Back in 2008, 29.4 percent of preschoolers in the Arizona WIC Program were either [...]
The food we eat affects many aspects of our lives. There's a direct link between poor nutrition and many of the leading causes of death in America such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. Healthy eating is important at every age. Most of us don't eat enough fruits, vegetables or whole grains, but we [...]
Our Bureau of Nutrition and Physical Activity competed successfully to have their SNAP-Ed interventions included in the 2016 SNAP-Ed Strategies and Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States. The comprehensive criteria used in the process focused on policy, systems and environmental change and the scoring process was rigorous. This national publication also includes many new cutting edge approaches from [...]
Arizona’s Empower Program has been selected for inclusion in the third revision of SNAP-Ed Strategies & Interventions: An Obesity Prevention Toolkit for States (Toolkit) that will be released in November 2015. The Toolkit review process was conducted in partnership with USDA and the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR). For the third revision of the Toolkit, more applications [...]
This month our department shared the first monthly Empower Newsletter focusing on policy development and implementation of the Empower Standards. Empower is a collaborative effort throughout ADHS. The Bureau of Child Care Licensing enrolls centers and small group homes in Empower and monitors implementation. The Bureau of Nutrition and Physical Activity develops and provides materials, [...]
This past weekend, we held the fourth annual “Empowering Habits and Empowering Lives” Empower Conference. More than 250 Early Care and Education professionals from all over Arizona participated in the all-day meeting. Conference participants explored the Empower Program's 10 Standards to Empower Children to Live Healthy Lives and learned how to be more effective through developing cultural [...]
Our Empower Program just launched its new and improved website. You’ll recall that Empower is our program that works with more than 2,400 licensed childcare facilities across the state of Arizona reaching more than 200,000 children. Each provider receives a discount on their licensing fees and in return commits to implementing 10 standards that empower kids to [...]
Increasing the percentage of women that choose to breastfeed is a critical evidence-based practice for addressing the childhood obesity epidemic. Here in Arizona, we have a lot to celebrate during World Breastfeeding Week- because of our collective work to increase breastfeeding is paying off. Arizona’s percentage of babies who begin breastfeeding has jumped to 83% [...]
Our Empower program is hosting its second annual conference Empowering Habits, Empowering Lives: Super Heroes in Action on May 4. The conference is a great opportunity for providers in Early Care and Education settings to learn the new 10 Empower standards that have been established for 2013. The conference sessions will also equip participants with [...]
