Alethea Chiappone is working to develop a mobile app to measure the adoption and implementation of healthy eating and active living policies and practices in family child care homes. The app will use photos taken by family child care providers to examine these healthy policies and practices. Chiappone and her team also will develop an accompanying tool to analyze the photos that are submitted through the mobile app. The app will equip program implementers with quality data that will help them deliver healthy eating and active living support that’s tailored to family child care providers. Several healthy interventions have demonstrated success in promoting effective practices, but limited research exists on these interventions with family child care providers, who are more likely to care for children from low-income households, rural communities, and/or racial or ethnic minority groups.

Her faculty mentor is Dr. Brandon Grimm.