Juhee Kim
Assistant Professor
Kinesiology and Community Health
Young children have little to say about their food choices. Their eating behavior is shaped largely by caregivers. Juhee
Kim has been concerned about nutrition and obesity among children for more than 10 years. She has seen obesity rates among one-
to three-year-old children increase to "alarming" rates, and she believes there is a need for early intervention and prevention.
By the age of six to nine months, 50 percent of infants in the United States are in day care. By three to four years old,
the number rises to 75 percent, and they are in day care for 30 to 40 hours a week. Dr. Kim chose to focus on the nutritional
practices of day care settings, not only because of the potential they held for contributing to the problem, but also because of
the promise they held as sites of early obesity prevention.
Dr. Kim was the first scholar to show that babies in day care gain more weight than those in parental care. In her current
research, which she is conducting under the "Caretaker Research Advancing Youth Obesity Knowledge" (CRAYON) research program at
Illinois, she is developing and validating new tools to measure nutrition, physical activity, and oral health practices and policies
in day care settings. She would like to determine whether the feeding policies themselves are a risk factor in the development of
unhealthy eating habits and obesity. In the long run, she would like to work with day care providers, both center-based and home-based,
to encourage healthier food choices and adequate time for physical activity to ensure healthy growth and development among young children.