East Florida Community Health

Our 2022 CHNA showed that the percentage of youth ready for kindergarten has declined in Volusia and Flagler counties, although it’s still higher than the rest of Florida.

According to public data, only 50.2% of toddlers are enrolled in preschool, which helps prepare them for kindergarten and beyond. We believe in prioritizing early childhood education because of the foundation it provides for better health and long-term outcomes for all residents. We are committed to addressing the needs of the community, especially the most vulnerable populations, to bring wholeness to all we serve.

We partnered with the Early Learning Coalition of Flagler and Volusia Counties to hold educational events on early learning. The program works to enhance children's school readiness by providing opportunities for quality early learning, while strengthening family stability for a healthy community. Research shows that when learning is part of a game, a fun activity or an everyday routine, the information sticks longer.

Through Florida’s Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK) program, children can learn all developmental domains through play. The eight domains include physical health, approaches to learning, social and emotional development, language and communication, emergent literacy, mathematical and scientific thinking, social studies and the arts, and motor development.

Families also have opportunity to enroll in the 3Ts program, which is comprised of free resources designed to help parents understand how important their role is in their child’s brain development.

In the AdventHealth East Florida Division, we distributed more than 4,000 summer take-home bags for VPK students. The bags included storybooks, toys for development, a tracker to help parents view brain development milestones and resource information to help support parents.

They also included information on library locations, screen time guidelines and healthy lifestyle advice. This was a collaborative effort between the Early Learning Coalition, Help Me Grow, Hunger Fight and Lake Cares Inc.

In the AdventHealth East Florida Division, we partnered with Easterseals Florida to offer information sessions on The P.L.A.Y. Project, an autism training and early intervention program. Easterseals Florida offers P.L.A.Y. therapy at their Autism Center of Excellence (ACE), where they help children ages 18 months to 6 years gain language and social skills.