Each Child. Every Community.

The North Carolina Partnership for Children (NCPC) has released Shape NC: Celebrating the Shape NC Journey, a report highlighting  Shape NC’s efforts to develop healthy lifestyles in young children across the state by promoting physical activity and healthy nutrition. Funded through a collaboration with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation (BCBCNCF), the new report is the culmination of more than 10 years of Shape NC from 2011-2021.

Shape NC, with three core partners, Be Active Kids (BAK), Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (GO NAPSACC), and Natural Learning Initiative (NLI), worked to prevent and mitigate the long-reaching and far-lasting impacts associated with being overweight or obese by implementing training and technical assistance (TA) for early childhood educators on healthy practices. The model cultivated healthy practices within child care settings to promote healthy outcomes for young children, fostering behavior patterns that would lead to lifelong benefits.

Brief History of Shape NC

Shape NC was created to address the incidence of childhood obesity across the state and to instill healthy lifestyles in children at a young age.  Children facing poverty or living in areas with food insecurity are more susceptible to negative health outcomes due to being overweight or obese. Shape NC focused on child care centers serving high percentages of children living in poverty.

Over 10 years, Shape NC served more than 13,000 children in 27 counties and positively influenced how children approached nutrition, play, and healthy behaviors.  Shape NC Technical Assistants  and partners trained child care centers on best practices in health. Child care centers were also able to design outdoor learning environments (OLEs) for children.  After just one Shape NC phase (2010-2013) more children were provided healthy foods and participated in active play while at home, and more child care centers met healthy best practices.

Shape NC highlights the importance of evidence-based collaborations to provide a continuum of professional growth for early childhood professionals.  Additionally, Shape NC shows the need for community and organizational support when creating early childhood initiatives, as Shape NC was most effective when supported by local organizations such as Smart Start local partnerships and child care resource and referral agencies.

The Future

NCPC, which leads the statewide Smart Start network, will leverage knowledge learned from Shape NC to provide additional coaching and technical assistance in a program called Beyond Shape NC: Coaching for Technical Assistants. With Beyond Shape NC, NCPC will collaborate with Child Care Health Consultants (CCHCs) to strengthen health practices, support Local Partnership technical assistance staff, and convene early childhood expertise to support high quality early learning across the state.

Together, the Smart Start network, its funders, and partners can work towards a healthy future for children.

You can learn more about Shape NC and its work over the last decade by reading the full report.