Improving Willingness to Try Fruits and Vegetables and Gross Motor Skills in Preschool Children in Guam

Early childhood interventions have the potential to promote long-term healthy eating and physical activity habits to prevent obesity. However, research studies including indigenous young children are lacking. This study examined the effectiveness of the Food Friends®: Fun with New Foods™ and Get Movin’ with Mighty Moves™ (FFMM) curricula on willingness to try fruits and vegetables (FV) and gross motor (GM) skills among preschoolers in Guam. A pre-post community-based study included preschoolers from Head Start (HS), gifted and talented education (Pre-GATE), and Pre-Kindergarten programs during school years (SY) 2017–2018 and 2018–2019. In SY2017–2018, the intervention group had a significant increase in imported FV when compared with the other three groups. No significant differences between groups were found on the other FV scales. Regarding gross motor skills, no significant differences between groups were found. In SY2018–2019, the intervention group had a significant increase in all FV scales except imported FV when compared with the enhanced intervention group. With gross motor skills, no significant differences were found between groups on its progress. These results warrant FFMM adaptations for the prevention of obesity among Guam preschoolers.

The Protocol for Child Monitoring Kenya - Infant/Toddler (PCM-IT) version: Construction and validation of a multiple-domain child assessment for use in Early Childhood intervention Programmes

Introduction: The integration of an informative and inclusive monitoring, evaluation and learning process which requires appropriate tools and methods is crucial to the effective implementation of early childhood interventions. Most of the child development assessment tools that have been constructed for use in sub-Saharan Africa consider the need to be affordable and feasibly administered by those with limited previous experience. These tools include the Kilifi Developmental Inventory (KDI), the A-not-B task, the Developmental Milestones Checklist, and the Profile for Socio-Emotional Development (PSED) which each use different approaches such as direct child assessment, observation, and parental reports. Whereas these tools have demonstrated good psychometric properties, each of them focusses either on only one or two child developmental domains, does not adequately measure all aspects of the different domains that are theoretically affected by a risk factor or intervention, or is not in sufficient depth. We therefore constructed a tool that combined these separate measures into one assessment schedule – the Protocol for Child Monitoring – Infant/Toddler version (PCM-IT). We subjected the combined tool to a process of pilot testing and validation to establish its psychometric properties, the feasibility of administration and acceptability.Method: The framework of five aspirations (inclusive, informative, people-centered, dynamic and interactive) that guide effective intervention delivery mechanisms was used to structure the evaluation of the PCM-IT. The piloting of the administration of the PCM-IT was based on a proof-of-concept study with a multi-arm pre-post design in Kibera and Kangemi, while the validation study was carried out in Mathare. The three areas are informal settlements in Nairobi. The results of the pilot study informed the selection of items that were included in the validation study.Results: The timed items were too difficult for the children included in the study and were therefore excluded. Overall, the PCM-IT had excellent reliability levels. Children’s raw sub-scale and overall developmental scores were normally distributed. There were weak to moderate correlations across the different domains. Speed and fluency of administration of items among the assessment team improved with practice and familiarity. The tool was perceived as providing holistic information about a child’s performance. Conclusion: The aspirations of Measurement for Change including the need for a tool development and administration process to be inclusive, informative, people-centered, and dynamic were met to a large extent. The aspiration of being interactive would be better met through an exploration of the use of the tool to engage with families to strengthen the quality of their nurturing care practices.

An Ounce of Prevention

I look at prevention through an economic lens and make three main points. First, those advocating preventive measures are often asked how much money a given measure saves. This question is misguided. Rather, preventive measures can be thought of as insurance, with a certain cost in the present that may or may not pay off in the future. In fact, although most medical preventive measures improve expected health, they do not save money. Various lifestyle and early childhood interventions, however, may both save money and improve health. Second, preventive measures, including medical and life style measures, are heterogeneous in their value, both across measures and within measure, across individuals. As a result, generalizations in everyday discourse about the value of prevention can be overly broad. Third, health insurance coverage for medical preventive measures should generally be more extensive than coverage for the treatment of a medical condition, though full coverage of preventive services is not necessarily optimal.

Intervention Implementation of Tools of the Mind for Preschool Children’s Executive Functioning

One of the more prominent early childhood interventions focused on the development of executive function (EF) skills is Tools of the Mind (Tools; Bodrova and Leong, 2019). Intervention studies comparing Tools classrooms with control classrooms, however, reveal inconsistent findings for children’s EF outcomes. The current study utilizes Head Start CARES teachers assigned to the Tools of the Mind enhancement intervention (Tools; N = 75) and the children in their classrooms (N = 738). Relations between teachers’ characteristics (i.e., teaching experience, psychological well-being, and educational background), training attendance and implementation (i.e., coach rated fidelity and observed scaffolding), and the interaction among these factors were examined as predictors of classroom-level gains in EF. Results revealed several significant moderation effects indicating that Tools implementation is related to classroom EF gains for some but not all teachers.