Evaluation of the CHIME Intervention for Improving Early Head Start/Head Start Educator Well-being

NCT ID: NCT05791825

Last Updated: 2026-01-27

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 571 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2023-03-13
• Study Completion Date: 2025-10-31

Brief Summary

This study will test how well a mindfulness-based intervention called CHIME improves the emotional well-being of educators in Early Head Start and Head Start (EHS/HS) settings. The study also will examine if there are any benefits to young children's social emotional health as a result of the CHIME program. Researchers will compare educators who participate in CHIME to educators who are asked to participate at a later time to see if there are benefits to their emotional health and teaching practices.

Detailed Description

To address the critical need of supporting Early Head Start/Head Start (EHS/HS) education staff well-being, investigators are collaborating with EHS/HS programs to co-refine and adapt a new mindfulness-based intervention (MBI), Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators (CHIME-HS), to make the intervention effective and internally sustainable for EHS/HS programs. Small studies with CHIME in general early care and education settings provide a proof of concept of its effectiveness, with educators reporting enhanced well-being and reduced workplace burnout. However, CHIME has not been adapted for or rigorously tested in EHS/HS settings. Building on promising evidence for the efficacy of CHIME, investigators partnered with EHS/HS programs to gather feedback from EHS and HS staff and families about how to refine CHIME to best address their needs, and determine CHIME's feasibility, acceptability, and fidelity within the EHS/HS context. In this way, investigators will maximize CHIME's acceptability, feasibility, and sustainability specifically for the unique needs of the HS/EHS start community. Investigators draw upon tenets of community-engaged research to co-refine and adapt the program to address EHS/HS education staff's well-being more effectively, and with sustainability in mind. After investigators refine CHIME in phase 1, investigators will work with EHS/HS partners to coordinate a rigorous, multi-method approach to evaluate the efficacy of CHIME with 120 EHS/HS education staff and 730 children/families (Phase 2). Investigators will also interview 10 directors and assistant EHS/HS directors to identify barriers and facilitators to implementation and to put in place effective mechanisms to support the sustainability of CHIME-HS (Phase 3). Through the iterative development and refinement of the facilitator training, investigators will determine if trained EHS/HS staff can effectively implement CHIME with fidelity for promoting EHS/HS education staff emotional well-being and workplace engagement, decreasing their physiological and emotional reactivity, promoting positive teaching practices, strengthening family partnerships, and promoting young children's social skills and self-regulation. Additionally, investigators will engage with other Early Head Start/Head Start University Partnership (HSUP) grantees during the yearly grantee workshop to share lessons learned, identify opportunities for collaborative analyses, and create shared dissemination products. A variety of dissemination efforts will be utilized to make findings from the study accessible to multiple audiences invested in EHS and HS populations. Dissemination products will include the CHIME-HS intervention, its promise for improving education staff well-being, outcomes, and lessons learned about implementation, including usability, feasibility, and cost. Investigators will work cooperatively with the consortium to disseminate policy findings recognizing that collective presentation and publication of findings can concentrate the impact.

Conditions

Health, Subjective; Work Related Stress; Compassion; Social Skills

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: OTHER
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Wait-listed comparison

Half of the HS/EHS educators will be assigned to a waitlisted control group. Specifically, these educators will be scheduled to receive the intervention after a 6-month waiting period. During the interim period, they will complete the same assessments as Arm 1, but will continue to receive 'business as usual' support and professional development through typical Head Start/EHS programming.

Group Type: NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Receives CHIME

Half of the educators participating in the trial will be assigned to this condition. CHIME is an 8-week, mindfulness and self-compassion based intervention that teaches educators strategies to enhance socioemotional learning in the classroom. The primary endpoints are: educator mindfulness and self-compassion, educator emotional regulation, educator heart rate variability, educator wellbeing and socio-emotional learning, and educator responsiveness, support, and sensitivity in the classroom. The secondary endpoints are: child self-regulation and social skills and family-school relationships.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

The 8-week, manualized, CHIME intervention consists of a 2-hour overview and seven weekly sessions, each lasting 90 minutes. Each CHIME session focuses on a specific mindfulness technique, such as mindful breathing, mindful listening and bringing attention to current states and surroundings to support optimal responsiveness, emotion regulation, and compassion. Social emotional learning is promoted by focusing on five broad competencies: self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision-making, self-management, and relationship skills and these competencies are practiced and developed through small group discussions, storytelling, journal reflections, modeling, and guided awareness (e.g., meditations), and implementation activities (e.g., gratitude necklace).

Interventions

Cultivating Healthy Intentional Mindful Educators

The 8-week, manualized, CHIME intervention consists of a 2-hour overview and seven weekly sessions, each lasting 90 minutes. Each CHIME session focuses on a specific mindfulness technique, such as mindful breathing, mindful listening and bringing attention to current states and surroundings to support optimal responsiveness, emotion regulation, and compassion. Social emotional learning is promoted by focusing on five broad competencies: self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision-making, self-management, and relationship skills and these competencies are practiced and developed through small group discussions, storytelling, journal reflections, modeling, and guided awareness (e.g., meditations), and implementation activities (e.g., gratitude necklace).

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

There are 3 types of participants included in this study: Early Head Start/Head Start education staff who work at one of the partner sites; parents of children attending EHS or HS; children attending EHS or HS and enrolled in the classroom of a participating EHS/HS educator.

Early Head Start and Head Start Educators:

• Provision of signed and dated informed consent form in Docusign
• Currently employed as a lead or assistant educator for >20 hours per week in a participating Head Start or Early Head Start center
• Stated intention to participate in the CHIME intervention
• All genders; age 19 and older
• Able to complete activities in English

Parents

• Provision of electronically (in Docusign) /manually signed informed consent form
• All genders
• Age 19 and older
• is Parent or legal guardian of child enrolled in the classroom of a EHS/HS educator participating in the study
• Able to complete activities

Children

• Provision of electronically signed informed consent form by parent/legal guardian
• All genders; aged < 6 years
• Enrolled in the classroom of a EHS/HS educator participating in the study
• If > 3 years, ability to complete study activities in English or with translation support

Exclusion Criteria

Early Head Start and Head Start Educators:

• Does not currently work at a participating HS/EHS center
• younger than 19 years of age

Parents

• Not a parent/legal guardian of a child in an EHS/HS classroom

• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Nebraska Lincoln

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Department of Health and Human Services

FED

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Holly Hatton-Bowers, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Nebraska Lincoln

Locations

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, Nebraska, United States

Countries

United States

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Other Identifiers

22130

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id