Escambia County is the 2nd poorest county in Florida and also has a high rate of illiteracy. Very few of the poorest children have medical homes so preventative care is almost non-existent. A group of nurses contracted by the Early Learning Coalition teaches health education to all the pre-k children in voucher assisted child care centers. Due to lack of funding we are unable to extend this education to the child care homes so many of the pre-k children in our area do not receive any of the health education services that middle class children receive from their parents and/or private physicians. (Our county has the highest BMI rates in our state.) We are working on a project, with very limited funds, to create heatlh literacy bags on a variety of health topics that child care home directors can "check out" and utilize many different lesson plans and activities to teach the children in their care about different health topics. We need funding to create twelve Nutrition Education bags and to train the directors on how to teach the lessons/activities to the children in their care. We hope to prevent the sharp increase in BMI that we see in the elementary years by beginning nutrition education early. We also hope to improve the health literacy rates of the children and see a "carry over" effect to the families. This project would help approximately 800-1000 three and four year olds in our county who are currently not being served.
