Nemours Children’s Health System is pleased to announce a search to fund an organization to test an Early Care and Education Learning Collaborative (ECELC) Toolkit beginning October 1, 2017.  The ECELC Toolkit will guide a state/community through developing and implementing a childhood obesity learning collaborative for early care and education (ECE) providers.  For additional information regarding Nemours National ECE Learning Collaborative model, please visit https://healthykidshealthyfuture.org/about-ecelc/.

Nemours’ National ECELC is an evidenced informed model that, with funding from CDC, has reached over 1,670 early care and education programs and over 170,000 children nationally over the past five years.  As childhood obesity prevention efforts in the United States continue, policy and practice based interventions to promote healthy eating and physical activity best practices help shape healthier environments for children attending early care and education programs.  Over the past five years, early care and education programs participating in Nemours ECELC have improved healthy environments in their programs and continue to implement healthy eating and physical activity best practices.  Through self-assessment tools, we have learned, the ECELC model contributes to increases in child nutrition, physical activity, breastfeeding support, outdoor play and learning, and screen time best practices and healthy policy changes in early child care and education programs across the country.[1]

The ECELC model has been implemented with large grants to public and private partners and technical assistance from Nemours and CDC.  As part of the project, Nemours has developed an off-the-shelf ECELC Toolkit to guide organizations on how to run a learning collaborative for ECE providers focused on childhood obesity prevention. Nemours is seeking a partner organization to test whether the model can be implemented with limited technical assistance using the ECELC Toolkit and a small amount of funding.  The ECELC Toolkit can provide a tremendous opportunity for an organization to build upon their current professional development repertoire for early care and education programs in a targeted community.  As an added bonus, all training materials and resources are provided at no additional costs to the partner organization!   Piloting the ECELC Toolkit before full dissemination will allow Nemours and CDC to enhance the content and supportive resources with key information to ensure success of learning collaborative(s) launched by other organizations.

The selected organization will collaborate with Nemours beginning October 1, 2017 through September 2018.

The selected partner organization will receive the user-friendly Nemours ECELC Toolkit manual, all training materials and resources online, limited technical assistance support, and a small amount of funding from Nemours.  The partner organization will provide a designated staff member for the project, funding to support the project needs beyond the Nemours grant, and participate in a formal evaluation process.

An informational webinar is scheduled for Monday, August 21, 2017 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET to provide potential partner organizations information regarding Nemours ECELC Toolkit project and application process.  For questions or to register for the webinar, please contact, Content Specialist Kevin Cataldo at kevin.cataldo@nemours.org.

Nemours Children’s Health System is committed to improving the health of children.  As a nonprofit children’s health organization, we consider the health of every child to be a sacred trust.  Through family-centered care in our children’s hospitals and clinics in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, as well as world-changing research, education and advocacy, Nemours fulfills the promise of a healthier tomorrow for all children – even those who may never enter our doors.

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[1] Smith TM, Blaser C, Geno Rasmussen C, Shuell J, Plumlee C, Yaroch AL. Assessment of nutrition and physical activity practices using self-report and observation in early care and education across multiple US states. Public Health Nutrition. March 2017:1-7. doi:10.1017/S1368980017000155.

Smith, T. M., Blaser, C., Geno Rasmussen, C., Shuell, J., Plumlee, C., Gargano, T., & Yaroch, A. L. (In Press). Real world implementation of a project aimed to improve nutrition and physical activity policies and practices in early care and education. Preventing Chronic Disease.

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