Universal health promotion program for preschoolers

Early childhood is a critical period for development, one that has lifelong impacts on health and well-being. A set of Healthy People 2030 initiatives launched by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (n.d.) include efforts to improve health and well-being, nationwide, partly by increasing the proportion of children who are developmentally prepared for school. With a similar goal, in 2022, a team of occupational therapy students partnered with education psychology students to create an inclusive childhood health program to promote physical and emotional well-being for preschoolers (Piek et al., 2013). This program is designed to be implemented in classrooms with four themed intervention stations that increase in complexity over the course of four bi-weekly sessions to offer universal health promotion for preschoolers.