Ever since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her Let’s Move! campaign in 2010, childhood obesity prevention has gained a lot of attention. Experts agree that obesity prevention needs to start early, and child care programs are a great place for children to build the eating and active play habits that will help them grow up healthy. Child care providers, advocates, and policymakers throughout the country have invested time, money, and effort over the past eight years to make child care a healthier place for our youngest children. Has all that work made a difference? A new report by Healthy Eating Research takes a look at how far early care and education (ECE) policies, systems, and environments have come since 2010.

Like many, I started providing child care as a means of supplementing family income while being able to stay home with my own children. I had previous experience in my teenage years as a steady date-night sitter and as a substitute at a center. I intended to be a provider for a few years.

With the support of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Child Care Aware^® of America (CCAoA) is pleased to offer technical assistance (TA) to states on projects that support development or maintenance of quality child care settings that promote child health.

While it is difficult to find agreement on many of our nation’s priorities, one thing is for sure – There is unprecedented agreement that child care is a critical issue in the United States today. In fact, a recent poll found that 97 percent of Democrats, 89 percent of Independents, and 87 percent of Republicans, say they favor government investments to make early education and child care more affordable.

Would you take this deal? Buy one year of college, get three more for no additional cost. A no-brainer, right? That’s similar to what happens when society invests in early childhood programs such as high quality child care, Head Start, Early Head Start, and home visiting programs. For every dollar spent, between two and four dollars are returned to the economy in various ways.

So says a new report released by the RAND Corporation, which studied the outcomes from 115 early education programs. Investing Early follows up on RAND’s 2005 review of early childhood programs. The report looks at a larger and more diverse set of early childhood interventions, including health-focused programs, community-based interventions, and programs that take a “two-generation approach” by working with children and their parents. Investing Early looks at the connections between early childhood programs and a broad set of individual and societal outcomes. It highlights health outcomes specifically and also evaluates the financial costs and benefits of investing in early childhood programs.