Before the Dr. Yum Project team and I jump feet first into the New Year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the progress we had in 2023. Here are some of the highlights!

1. Preschool

Our preschool team, Wendy and Jessica have been busy enrolling new schools and packing kits to send to new participating Early Childhood Education centers throughout the year. We started TWO new pilots. The first was with the YMCA of the USA with 16 of their sites across the country. The second is with the Alabama Partnership for Children. All in all we are reaching 40% more schools than we did in 2022!

2. National Partners

In response to skyrocketing childhood obesity rates and the new guidelines for the management of childhood obesity, we created Touchpoints, a program of Health Behavior Modules for medical providers to use with pediatric patients and their families. It is a family-centered program that can be used as part of the management of childhood obesity.

3. Conferences

We attended, presented and exhibited at four national conferences NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) in Nashville, AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) in Washington, DC, CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program) in San Diego and NHSA (National Head Start Association) in Phoenix. It was a great way to get the word out about our work in some really robust professional conferences.

4. Research

We finally got to share the results of our study looking at the effectiveness of Dr. Yum’s Preschool Food Adventure on a group of 614 students in Head Start classrooms in Alabama. We were surprised and delighted to find some promising effects on high weight and low weight students. We also showed that at the end of 7 monthly lessons students showed less food fussiness and were enjoying food more and our research even won a top prize at an International Conference!

Take a look at some of our other accomplishments:

Looking ahead

We look forward to more recipes, more favorite foods, more travel to professional conferences, continued expansion into our partner and preschool programs, and some exciting new research in 2024!