Early Care and Education
The Health Empowered Site
Funded by 
What Healthy, Early Learning Looks Like
We partner with providers of all kinds – Child Care Learning Centers, Family Child Care Learning Homes, Head Start, Easter Seals Centers, and Pre-K programs – to build environments that bring the greatest benefit to children in the critical first five years of life.
Learn more about our impact ⟶
Step into a Health Empowered early care and education (ECE) site, and you’ll see a vibrant world of colors and sounds, moving and talking, and nutritious foods to touch, taste and share. Essentially, more of what kids need to thrive from birth to age five – the crucial time when 90% of brain development happens. Exposing children to a range of high-quality interactions and experiences with trusted caregivers can optimize their mental, physical, and social development in these first five years, and far into the future.
In every way, Health Empowered ECE sites are deeply committed to fostering – and modeling – behaviors that support healthy growth and development. That means that children and teachers are engaged together in –
- Age-appropriate movement and active play
- Healthy eating, snacking and drinking throughout the day
- Language development – that rich and changing flow of words and stories that builds language and helps young children learn important social cues, like taking turns or following directions
- Showing parents what skills, foods, and active learning challenges to enjoy at home
Each Health Empowered ECE site looks different – no two are exactly the same. Each site assesses nutrition and physical activity practices and determines areas for improvement that best suits the needs of their children, families and staff, but all are backed by coaching and support that lasts throughout the relationship.
How It Happens
Dedicated onsite support
Look to your Health Educator for training, resources and ongoing technical support. This friendly personal coach will connect your Site Health Team to staff trainings and classroom lessons, activities and taste tests. They can even point you to outside resources, like grant opportunities.
Dynamic professional development
Active learning works best for children – and adults. In fun and flexibly scheduled training, your Site Health Team will determine which nutrition and physical activity goals make sense for your site’s unique culture and climate. In our highly interactive process, you’ll develop the action plan that works for your children and staff. Your staff can earn DECAL Bright from the Start training credit, too.
Healthy child and family engagement
Being a Health Empowered ECE site supports the good things you’re already doing with even more approaches to active learning. Every activity we suggest is linked to Georgia Early Learning & Development (GELD) standards. But the real magic starts with Model Lessons – as we take you step-by-step through fresh interactions with your young learners.
From our lessons linked to storybooks, to our taste tests, gardening and physical activity kits, we give you the tools and strategies to spark healthier learning and life choices for your children and their families.
This material was funded by USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP. This institution is an equal opportunity provider. For the USDA’s full non-discrimination statement, click here.
Hit all the right milestones.
Develop and bloom into a place where good health and early learning are ever-expanding – for children, teachers and families.
Become a Health Empowered ECE Site.
Eat. Move. Talk!
Powerful, everyday actions that can change a child’s life
Eat. Move. Talk! is a virtual training and toolkit for ECE providers designed to improve young children’s health outcomes by promoting healthy eating and physical activity strategies in combination with Language Nutrition.
Eat. Move. Talk! offers useful strategies and resources to engage young children in small, everyday practices that lead to life-changing behaviors.
Throughout the training, educators learn the importance of modeling healthy eating, moving, and talking with young children in their care while encouraging families to adopt these same practices at home.
Eat. Move. Talk! was developed in partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH), the Atlanta Speech School, Emory University, HealthMPowers, and other partners. Over the past three years, Eat. Move. Talk! has been piloted in three Georgia communities, including Dalton, Clarkston, and Valdosta.
To access the virtual Eat. Move. Talk! training, click here.
Did you know?
Early exposure to healthy foods, creative movement and exercise, and a rich range of words and conversations can change the arc of a child’s life. Children immersed in these powerful experiences in the first five years of life grow up more socially and academically engaged, more active and less-often overweight – or at risk for heart disease or Type 2 Diabetes – and more likely to graduate from high school.
It takes a rich flow of many different types of words and sounds to prepare young children to read.
In fact, the number and types of words a child hears before birth and beyond – through stories, conversation and songs – are the best predictor of reading proficiency by third grade, the age when children transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” And being able to read fluently by the end of third grade is associated with more positive academic, health and economic outcomes in later life.
“I have been doing this for 23 years now and sometimes find myself needing motivation. I did receive it in this class. I’ve been trying new recipes with my little ones, and we are making memories. I didn’t know how they would react when they saw we were using fresh spinach in our smoothies, but they drank it all! I have learned there are ways of getting veggies in our picky little eaters.”
Dawn Bradley’s Learning Center
Every child nourished, active, and talking is our goal.
Reach for the Stars!
Learn Best Practices in Nutrition and Physical Activity
The Reach for the Stars Learning Collaborative is a statewide training series for ECE providers designed to transform current practices within early care settings to create healthier environments for young children, staff, and families.
Throughout the training series, educators, administrators, and staff work with their peers to gain and apply knowledge, tools, and resources to make meaningful policy and practice changes around healthy eating and physical activity within their early care program.
This 30-hour Bright from the Start-approved professional development opportunity affords participants the opportunity to learn best practices in nutrition and physical activity, self-assess their program, and create plans for improvement in a supportive environment of peers and facilitators.
To receive more information on joining our next learning collaborative, email ecetraininginfo@healthmpowers.org.
Funding Note: We are grateful to Nemours Children’s Health System for their generous support of the training development and implementation of the initial Learning Collaborative cohorts. However, additional financial support is still needed to continue.
Currently, we are seeking funding to launch our next Learning Collaborative cohort. In measures big and small, with your support, we can expand this critical work to promote and implement healthy eating and physical activity practices among Georgia’s youngest learners.
For more information on how you can contribute, please email Development Director, Lee Ann Else
“Thank you so much for the opportunity to share in this experience. It was very helpful in determining areas of needs in our program and addressing them to ensure that best practices are being exhibited at our center for the health and physical well-being of our children and families.”
Tabitha Abney, Infant Master Teacher