Health Policy - Nutrition Standards for Foods and Beverages

Running Head: HEALTH POLICY
HEALTH POLICY MAKING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

HEALTH POLICY1
Health policy making is the act of developing, planning, and implementation of programs
to improve the standard of health and eradicating the social determinants that obstructs quality in
healthcare. Healthy people 2020 initiative is an implementation done to increase awareness in
public regarding the determinants of health, disability, diseases and the chances for progression
in the healthcare aspect. It has objectives that focuses on the issues of the national, state and local
levels. All the objectives have certain aims that is beneficial for the target groups and laws
pertaining to it. The objective chosen for this essay is NWS-1 Increase the number of States with
nutrition standards for foods and beverages provided to preschool-aged children in child care
(Shi, 2018). This objective is for the national levels as it focuses on increasing the nutrition
levels in foods and beverages for the children in child care. The plan is to make action plans for
this objective and working towards enhancing the quality of food pre-school aged children are
getting in every child care of the country.
Groups and organizations have been working towards this objective such as Child and
Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to start
providing healthy meals in schools for preschool aged children. They promote wellness,
development of children, and health in people who are not getting these facilities. Child care
providers have the responsibility of instilling nutritious habits in children and making them
follow the dietary guidelines as suggested by the USDA and CACFP. USDA made major
changes in the nutrition standards of CACFP in April 2016. The nutrition standards were again
updated and went into action in October 2017, this helped them in protecting the lives of
children. The USDA provides resources, guidance, practice and training centers for CACPF
including day care homes, also supporting them in giving healthy and balanced food and
beverages to the preschool aged children in day cares (Fns.usda.gov, 2019). A number of laws

HEALTH POLICY2
and regulations are established for this objective such as National School Lunch program
(NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP), it provided for healthy meal plans for children in
schools. A legislation known as Child Nutrition Act is formed by the federal government that
ensures every federal school is authorized to child nutrition programs and healthy meals. In
every 5 years, Congress inspects the laws that governs this acts so that the programs are meeting
the nutritional needs of the preschool aged children. The meals planned will be meeting all the
criteria of the nutritional requirements of preschool aged children in child cares, the laws
mentioned works on improving the quality of calories such as protein, iron, calcium, vitamin A
and C, which are important for promoting growth and development. The Nutrition Standards
based on 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans looks after the recommended levels of dietary
fibers, cholesterol, sodium, saturated fats and total fats, which are found on the nutrition label of
food products. This helps the menu planners of the child care centres to include more of these
foods so that it can improve the dietary status of children.
The intervention planned will be at the national level as the objective focuses on
increasing the states with improved nutritional standards in foods and beverages for preschool
aged children. The baseline of this objective is to increase nutrition standards for foods and
beverages in 34 states for preschool aged children in child cares, as it is already present in 24
states. This plan will be implemented by organizing national programs, policies, laws and
regulations to meet the requirements of this objective (Healthypeople.gov, 2019).
The outlining of this proposal will be according to the financial, economical and policy
information of the objective and how it will be linked to the federal government. It will be
proposed to the national government by including the data of the health conditions of children in
the child cares and giving the appropriate reason to implement this plan. The budget has to be set