Each Child. Every Community.

In celebration of the upcoming new year, Smart Start is celebrating our hard work and taking this time to recognize the role of Smart Start local partnerships in each community. Smart Start is working across the state to create a brighter future for each child in every community. Throughout the first weeks of December we will be showcasing the impact of Smart Start by diving into our work with early care and education, family support, early literacy, health and nutrition, and our innovation throughout the pandemic. To learn more about Smart Start, you can read Smart Start’s 2020-2021 Impact Report.

Smart Start Local partnerships work at the local level to advance child health and nutrition and to ensure children and families have the tools they need to establish healthy behavior patterns. These behavior patterns are focused on childhood nutrition and physical activity as well as teaching children to be more resilient in the face of trauma caused by Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
Smart Start is providing critical support to improve the health and well being of children across the state. Due to the network’s hard work, the following impacts have been made:

• 54 medical practices are enrolled in Assuring Better Child Health & Development (ABCD), a program that works to increase health and developmental screening and referral rates for all young children
• Nearly 6,000 children in the past year have received healthier food options and more physical activity in child care as part of the evidence-based Nutrition and Physical Activity SelfAssessment for Child Care (NAPSACC) program
• Over 1,200 children with special needs or at-risk for developmental delay that received Smart Start health-related enhanced services

One way Smart Start has focused on health and nutrition is through Shape NC: Healthy Starts, an evidence-driven program that promotes healthy practices in child care centers for children at risk of or in poverty. Over 13,000 children were served by Shape NC since its implementation. You can read more about Shape NC, by reading Shape NC: Celebrating the Shape NC Journey.

Child Care Health Consultants (CCHCs) have also been essential to ensuring the health and development of young children. CCHCs are trained health professionals who work with child care programs to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate strategies to achieve high quality, safe and healthy child care environments. Smart Start has worked with partners to expand access of CCHCs across the state. Eighty-seven counties in North Carolina are now served by CCHCs, providing critical advice and support to child care providers across the state.

Smart Start is also committed to increasing resilience across the state. NCPC is serving as the backbone agency of the NC Healthy and Resilient Communities Initiative, bringing together more than 40 community collaboratives to reduce multiple forms of adversity, increase protective factors, and promote systems change in community infrastructure and collaborations. This work is especially impactful by those experiencing the effects of childhood trauma caused by abuse, loss, and even hurricanes.

Local Smart Start partnerships are promoting resilience in unique ways. In Bladen County, Bladen Smart Start formed the Resilient Bladen Coalition to combat trauma and promote resilience. The group has created a Community Action Plan to train families, agencies, and community members and to build a resilient, trauma-informed community.

This is just one example of how a local partnership is serving its community through collaboration.

Local collaborations to enhance childhood health and development are critical to the success of Smart Start local partnerships who work at the community level to enhance early childhood health. The unique, innovative ways Smart Start local partnerships serve their communities can be discovered in the 2020-2021 Smart Start Impact Report.