Investigation of key domains associated with worker well-being and burnout and turnover in the early care and education workforce.

PURPOSE: The early care and education (ECE) workforce provides care for children aged zero to five. This critical segment of the workforce experiences significant burnout and turnover rates resulting from extensive demands, including job stress and poor overall well-being. Factors associated with well-being in these settings and the resulting impacts on burnout and turnover are understudied. The purpose of this study was to investigate associations between five well-being domains and burnout and turnover outcomes among a large sample of Head Start ECE staff in the United States. METHODS: An 89-item survey based off the National Institutes of Occupational Safety and Health Worker Wellbeing Questionnaire (NIOSH WellBQ) was administered to ECE staff employed in five large urban and rural Head Start agencies. The WellBQ is made up of five domains intended to measure worker well-being as a holistic construct. We utilized linear mixed-effect modeling with random intercepts to investigate associations between sociodemographic characteristics, well-being domain sum scores and burnout and turnover. RESULTS: After controlling for sociodemographic variables, the well-being Domain 1 (Work Evaluation and Experience) (ß = - .73, p < .05) and Domain 4 (Health Status) (ß = - .30, p < .05) were significantly and negatively associated with burnout; the well-being Domain 1 (Work Evaluation and Experience) (ß = - .21, p < .01) was significantly and negatively associated with turnover intent. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that multi-level well-being promotion programs could be critical to mitigate ECE teacher stress and address individual-, interpersonal-, and organizational-level predictors of overall ECE workforce well-being.

Impact of a nutrition education programme on preschool children's willingness to consume fruits and vegetables.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of a preschool-based nutrition education programme consisting of twelve 'hands on' nutrition education lessons delivered during the school year on young children's willingness to consume fruits and vegetables. DESIGN: Quasi-experimental, pre-post design including the collection of plate waste evaluation data at the start and end of the 2015-2016 school year within two groups: (1) randomly selected classrooms receiving the intervention and (2) within conveniently sampled preschool classrooms not receiving the intervention serving as a comparison group. SETTING: Centre-based preschool programmes serving low-income families in the Denver metro area. PARTICIPANTS: Three- to five-year-old children in preschool classrooms participating in the intervention during the 2015-2016 school year (n 308) and children enrolled in comparison classrooms (n 215). RESULTS: Repeated-measures logit models assessed whether increases in the odds of consuming small samples of fruits and vegetables between Time 1 (pre-intervention) and Time 2 (post-intervention) were different for children within the intervention group compared with the comparison group. Analyses showed that the change over time in consumption of the three vegetable samples varied by intervention status with greater change occurring among children within the intervention group (edamame: P = 0·001; cauliflower: P ≤ 0·0001 and red pepper: P ≤ 0·0001). Unlike vegetables, the change over time in consumption of the two fruit samples was not different between children within the intervention and comparison groups. CONCLUSIONS: An experiential-learning nutrition education programme can positively influence eating behaviours of low-income preschoolers in a centre-based setting by increasing willingness to consume vegetables.