Educating Young Children Volume 1 - Summer 2025 | Page 21

back pain, obesity, diabetes, asthma, and depression— compared to those in other professions. These health challenges contribute to high levels of stress, burnout, and workforce turnover, which, in turn, can contribute to lower quality experiences for children and families. Therefore, fostering educators’ well-being is crucial for everyone involved in early childhood education.

Given the urgent need to support the well-being of educators, especially those who work with children and families with limited financial resources, under stress, and / or exposed to trauma, in 2021 the Administration for Children and Families of the US Department of Health and Human Services funded the Head Start University Partnership Early Head Start / Head Start Workforce Well-Being Consortium. The consortium includes researchers from six different universities working in partnership to implement and study six different programs to promote educators’ well-being.( For more information on the consortium and the different wellness projects, see“ Nurturing the Nurturer: Elevating Educator Well-Being and Competencies Through Comprehensive Wellness Programs.”)

As part of this interdisciplinary group, we( the authors) worked to develop and validate a conceptual model of early childhood education workforce well-being informed by research. In this article, we describe multilevel domains of well-being and offer a sampling of strategies to promote each type. This serves as a foundation for the in-depth explanations and examples included in this issue of Educating Young Children. Taken together, the articles describe changes that can be made to sustain a holistic approach to educator well-being throughout the early childhood ecosystem.

Well-being can be divided into individual-level and interrelated domains, or types. We identified four core domains:

› Psychological well-being

› Physical well-being › Health behaviors