Celebrating the 2026 Healthy Apple Award Winners 

By Raegan Sales | Healthy Apple Program Lead, Children’s Council of San Francisco 

Children’s Council of San Francisco’s Healthy Apple Program is excited to announce the 2026 Healthy Apple Award recipients.  

On June 27, 2026, we hosted over 60 program participants for our 8th awards ceremony, celebrating with an awards luncheon at La Cocina on Hyde. Healthy Apple recognized 51 child care sites with 85 awards for excellence in child care nutrition and physical activity practices! Even more impactful, these awards reflect healthy practices in place at early education sites serving 752 children.

All Healthy Apple Award recipients  demonstrate  a commitment to nutrition and physical activity in child care settings across the city. The 34 gold awards represent child care programs meeting or exceeding every nutrition and/or physical activity best practice promoted by the Healthy Apple Program.

We are excited to see a very high proportion of awardees receive gold awards this year, which is a testament to their commitment to Healthy Apple over the years and continuous improvement at their sites as they have moved up in award levels.  

This year also marked the introduction of the inaugural Healthy Apple Oral Health recognition, honoring five educators who participated in the Healthy Apple Oral Health Pilot. In partnership with CavityFree SF, these educators helped test a new oral health assessment and received training, resources and materials to support oral health best practices in their programs. The cohort also provided valuable feedback to help refine the assessment and explore opportunities to integrate oral health as a new Healthy Apple topic area. We are proud to recognize these educators: Ada Aguillon, Irma Schwarz Quinonez, Maryetta Jefferson, Mission Possible Preschool and Qi Xia Deng.  

Congratulations to this year’s awardees!  

Healthy Apple partners with educators in their efforts to achieve research-based best practices, including meal planning, setting up their environment and infusing physical activity and nutrition awareness into their curriculum, writing healthy policies and engagement with families.    

A peer-reviewed study found that “integration of the Healthy Apple Program with existing public health nursing services was associated with significantly more children exposed to best practices and improvement in child BMI change. The results warrant continued integration of Healthy Apple into local public health infrastructure.”  

Are you a child care educator who wants to be recognized with a Healthy Apple Award in 2027? Click here to get started today.  

Thank you to our program funders, the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Nutrition Equity Opportunity and Physical Activity (NEOP) and the Sugary Drink Distributor Tax (SDDT), as well as our luncheon sponsor, Kaiser Permanente, for their generous support of Healthy Apple and our Healthy Apple Awards!