Supporting Vermont Families in Packing Healthy Lunches for Children in Childcare

Introduction. Partnering with Hunger Free Vermont, an organization that works to end hunger and malnutrition across the state, we investigated the nutritional value of the packed meals parents provide for their children in early childcare. The USDA\u27s My Plate resource was used as a measure to assess variety, dividing foods into five groups: grains, dairy, vegetables, fruits, and protein. The results will help Hunger Free Vermont design nutrition education materials for childcare centers to provide to the families they serve. Methods. Online surveys were distributed, asking parents to report the foods they recently provided for their children in packed lunches, to rate how \u27healthy\u27 they thought those lunches were, and to note any barriers they experience to packing healthy foods. Results. Survey results showed that the average number of sweets packed by parents who had low confidence in their ability to pack healthy meals was significantly higher than the average number packed by parents with high confidence (p \u3c 0.05). Additionally, the total number of cited barriers was significantly higher in parents who had low confidence in their ability to pack healthy meals (p \u3c 0.01). Conclusions. Many parents cited time constraints and ‘picky’ children as barriers to providing healthy meals, with concerns about the expense of healthy items and lack of childcare for shopping or food-prep time following close behind. In the future, education materials that address children’s unhealthy food preferences or further investigations into barriers to providing healthy lunches may facilitate development of resources for Vermont families.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1259/thumbnail.jp

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Module

Based on the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine report it is estimated that one in every five children experience a mental disorder in a given year. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry there are less than one fourth of child and adolescent psychiatrists necessary to address the estimated national needs. It is essential for medical schools to expose students to child psychiatry as this might encourage them to pursue this as a specialty. Also, many of the students will become primary care physicians who will have the possibility to screen and in some cases treat child and adolescents with mental illnesses. The aim of this study was to develop an engaging and relevant educational tool to teach medical students about the most common diagnoses in child and adolescent psychiatry and their treatment. This module will be presented to third year medical students during their psychiatry clerkship. Their performance on the child psychiatry questions of the NBME psychiatry shelf exam will be compared to the performance of previous medical students that have taken the shelf exam after their psychiatry clerkship