About CCHCs
Active Child Care Health Consultants
Find a CCHCChild Care Health Consultants (CCHCs) are trained health professionals with education and experience in both child and community health and early care and education. CCHCs work with early care and education programs to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate strategies to achieve high quality, safe and healthy child care environments.
Active CCHCs in North Carolina have successfully completed the NC Child Care Health Consultant Course and are listed on the Find a CCHC page. CCHCs listed as primary may be contacted to provide services to child care facilities in the county/ies they serve.
CCHC One-Pager
Download a one-pager on Child Care Health Consultation here: CCHC one-pager 2022
What do CCHCs do?
- Assess the environments for health and safety in child care programs
- Develop strategies for inclusion of children with special health care needs
- Support early educators with preventing and managing injuries and infectious disease
- Connect early educators and families to community health resources
- Provide up-to-date information on regulations and best practices to early educators
- Provide health and safety training and technical assistance to early educators
When to Contact a CCHC
When a child care program could benefit from training, technical assistance, coaching, assessment, or quality improvement planning in any area of health and safety including the following:
- Quality Health, Safety, and Wellness Practices
- [Health and Safety] Policy Development and Implementation
- Health Education
- [Health and Safety] Resource and Referral
- Illness and Infectious Diseases
- Children with Special Healthcare Needs
- Medication Administration
- Safety and Injury Prevention
- Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
- Infant and Child Social Emotional Wellbeing
- Child Abuse and Neglect
- Physical Activity
- Nutrition
- Oral Health
- Environmental Health
- Staff Health and Wellness
CCHCs make a difference
Child care health consultation has shown to positively impact:
- health and safety policies and practices in child care programsi
- indicators of health and access to preventive health care for children and staffii
- the development and use of standards based health and safety policies in early childhood education programsiii
i Alkon, Abbey, et al, Child Care Health Consultation Improves Health and Safety Policies and Practices, Academic Pediatrics, September 2009
ii Isbell, Patricia, et al, Improvement of Child Care Programs’ Health and Safety Policies, and Practices, and Children’s Access to Health Care, Linked to Child Care Health Consultation, NHSA Dialog: The Research-to-Practice Journal for the Early Childhood Field, 2013
iii Ramler, Malia, et al, The influence of child care health consultants in promoting children’s health and well-being: A report on selected resources. US DHHS, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, HRSA. 2006