Episode 119 - Health Education in Early Childhood with Dr Ruth Wallace

In this episode we chat with Dr Ruth Wallace, a senior lecturer in the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University. Ruth is an expert in nutrition and early childhood education, which has led her to co-write and publish the “Little Aussie Bugs” series of books with her collaborator Dr Amelia Ruscoe. These innovative books are aimed at young children, typically in childcare, and help them to learn about different aspects of health and healthy behaviours. The books are designed to be dialogic, which means that an adult helps the child to become the story teller, helping children improve their literacy skills in the process. To aid in this process, Ruth and her team have produced training materials to assist early childhood educators to use the Little Aussie Bugs books to help the young children they work with. We had a great chat with Ruth about the books, as well as how her team has been working with childcare centres to use the books in their programs to help improve literacy and health literacy for children from an early age. You can find out more about Little Aussie Bugs here: https://www.ecu.edu.au/newsroom/articles/news/little-aussie-bugs-goes-to-uni And about Ruth and her work here: https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/medical-and-health-sciences/our-staff/profiles/senior-lecturers/dr-ruth-wallace As always, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can contact us at: meaningofhealth@outlook.com Instagram Twitter/X Bluesky @healthmeanswhat FaceBook @MeaningofHealth