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Abstract
Healthy Child Care Georgia (HCCG) is a nutrition and physical activity intervention designed to increase the quality and quantity of nutrition and physical activity education for children in early care and education programs in Georgia. Preschool teachers are potential change agents for combating obesity. Enhancing teacher modeling is desirable, because observational learning is a promising method to influence child nutrition and physical activity behaviors. This mixed methods study investigated barriers preventing teachers from implementing and modeling obesity prevention best practices and policies and evaluated the impact goal setting and coaching had on best practice implementation and modeling and self-efficacy to model healthy habits. Seven barriers were identified. There was significant improvement in teacher implementation and modeling for both nutrition (Z = -2.220, 0.026) and physical activity (Z = -2.060, p = 0.039) practices. Teacher self-efficacy to model healthy nutrition and physical activity behaviors increased only according to the qualitative findings.