The Culture Of Health In Early Care And Education: Workers' Wages, Health, And Job Characteristics.

Little is known about the health of the 2.2 million early care and education (ECE) workers responsible for the care, well-being, and success of the approximately ten million children younger than age six enrolled in ECE, or the extent to which ECE environments and employers play a role in workers' health. The purpose of this analysis was to describe the health of an ECE worker sample by wage and by job and center characteristics and to begin to explore the relationships between these factors and workers' health. Our data indicate that ECE workers earn low wages and experience poor mental well-being and high rates of food insecurity. Lower-wage workers worked at centers with more children enrolled in subsidy programs and were more likely to work at centers that did not offer health insurance, paid sick leave, or parental or family leave. Policies and programs that raised workers' wages or mandated the provision of meals to both children and workers could better support teacher health and the quality of ECE for children. Our results suggest that the culture of health in ECE settings and equity-related outcomes could be improved by helping centers provide support and flexibility to teachers (for example, offsetting workers' benefit costs or reducing teacher-to-child ratios to reduce stress) who are managing their own health in the context of demanding work.

Responding to an Increased Minimum Wage: A Mixed Methods Study of Child Care Businesses during the Implementation of Seattle's Minimum Wage Ordinance.

Low wages are a persistent feature of child care jobs and affect the quality of children's care. In this article, we examine how Seattle's $15 minimum wage affects the local child care sector using three datasets: (1) state administrative records on approximately 200 Seattle-based child care businesses; (2) a longitudinal employer survey of 41 child care centers; and (3) in-depth interviews of 15 Seattle child care center directors. Findings suggest that the increase to $15/hour affects the majority of child care businesses. Providers' most commonly responded to higher labor costs by raising tuition and reducing staff hours or headcount-strategies that may negatively impact low-income families and staff. While raising wages may help some child care employees, considering the full range of effects of this policy underscores the need for a systems approach to supporting the child care sector as a whole.

Validity and Interrater Reliability of the Visual Quarter-Waste Method for Assessing Food Waste in Middle School and High School Cafeteria Settings.

BACKGROUND: Measuring food waste (ie, plate waste) in school cafeterias is an important tool to evaluate the effectiveness of school nutrition policies and interventions aimed at increasing consumption of healthier meals. Visual assessment methods are frequently applied in plate waste studies because they are more convenient than weighing. The visual quarter-waste method has become a common tool in studies of school meal waste and consumption, but previous studies of its validity and reliability have used correlation coefficients, which measure association but not necessarily agreement. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to determine, using a statistic measuring interrater agreement, whether the visual quarter-waste method is valid and reliable for assessing food waste in a school cafeteria setting when compared with the gold standard of weighed plate waste. METHODS: To evaluate validity, researchers used the visual quarter-waste method and weighed food waste from 748 trays at four middle schools and five high schools in one school district in Washington State during May 2014. To assess interrater reliability, researcher pairs independently assessed 59 of the same trays using the visual quarter-waste method. Both validity and reliability were assessed using a weighted κ coefficient. RESULTS: For validity, as compared with the measured weight, 45% of foods assessed using the visual quarter-waste method were in almost perfect agreement, 42% of foods were in substantial agreement, 10% were in moderate agreement, and 3% were in slight agreement. For interrater reliability between pairs of visual assessors, 46% of foods were in perfect agreement, 31% were in almost perfect agreement, 15% were in substantial agreement, and 8% were in moderate agreement. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the visual quarter-waste method is a valid and reliable tool for measuring plate waste in school cafeteria settings.