Our Aims:

Conduct a Health and Safety Project among 900 childcare centers enrolled in Pennsylvania Childcare Centers Antibiotics Resistance Awareness Initiative (PA-ARAI).

Survey directors of early learning centers and child care providers and assess their knowledge, practices and opinions regarding antibiotic use.

Implement and evaluate educational interventions to reduce childhood illnesses.

Understand how sick-child exclusion policies contribute to unnecessary use of antibiotics and suggest improvements to current practice.

directors corner

Director's Corner

The United States Census Bureau estimates that Pennsylvania has approximately 8000 licensed child care settings with approximately a quarter million children. Since child care centers are required to follow sick-child exclusion policies, they sometimes require that sick children receive antibiotics before they are readmitted to the center. However this practice promotes inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.

The PA Department of Health is partnering with CDC’s Get Smart campaign to implement and evaluate selected interventions to address factors that drive overuse of antibiotics among children in childcare centers.

Operational Plans:

Pre-Post intervention surveys to assess child care center directors’ exclusion policy practices and opinions about antibiotic use.

Implementation of a pilot hand washing educational training seminar.

  • Selected providers from child care facilities across PA will be trained at the Bureau of Laboratories on disease and outbreak prevention in a child care setting through hand washing during the Get Smart About Antibiotic Week
  • Emphasize the importance of good hand washing through teaching materials and lesson plans with PA state standards.
  • Hands-on training using Glo Germ™ powder to practice proper hand hygiene.
  • Distribution of Glo Germ™ kits, teaching resources including a DVD on hand hygiene and sneezing, a cartoon book Germs Make Me Sick for children, and also a copy of Peeper Has a Fever, a children’s book from Hippocratic Press to all participants.

A webinar to include interventions for providers modified to include PA specific policy and practice to understand sick-child exclusion policies and recognize, prevent and manage infectious diseases in child care facilities. The webinar will include the latest recommendations and strategies from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Disseminate information through the internet to increase public and provider awareness about appropriate antibiotic use.

Collaborate with the Division of Infectious Diseases at Penn State College of Medicine to develop a hand hygiene video that incorporates humor to communicate messages.