The National Nutrition Network’s mission is to bring together expertise from across Australia to strengthen food and nutrition policy and practice in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Through collaboration, knowledge exchange and evidence translation, the Network seeks to support equitable, sustainable and positive food environments that contribute to children’s wellbeing, development, belonging and positive relationships with food.

Given the high volume of children who attend ECEC settings, there is an ideal opportunity to translate evidence into policy and practice and influence the systems and environments that shape children’s everyday food experiences.

This is particularly important given the ECEC sector must now maintain national standards established by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).

Specifically, we seek to:

• Facilitate discussions relating to research and professional development to drive future research, policy and practices.
• Inform and facilitate healthy sustainable food environment research for translation into, policy and practice.
• Share knowledge and expertise to reduce replication of research and resources and guide policy decision makers.
• Foster quality research practices through collaboration and informal mentoring strategies.
• Coordinate professional development to build members capacity to exchange knowledge, to influence research, policy and practice in the ECEC sector.