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TUCSON - If you have children too young for school, chances are they spend part or maybe most of their day in child care.

Pima County's Health Department has a program where it sends county nurses into child care centers to help protect your kids while they're away from home.

Nurse Cece Teague is one of eight Pima County Health Department employees who work with child care centers. Her job is to improve child care centers' health and safety.

She says, "The child care providers don't know that they should let the bleach sit on the diaper changing table for two minutes to kill the germs. They're great at the early childhood things that they do. But they don't have that health and safety background."

Child care providers, from small homes to big centers, apply to be in Pima County's quality health program. Teague regularly visits about 30 facilities every 2 weeks.

Marcia Burns applied to be in the program even though she says her El Rio Child Care Center already had good assessments.

Burns says, "We learned a lot about how we can improve safety on our playgrounds and in our classrooms."

El Rio teacher Rosanna Quihuis says Teague's visits to her class make a difference. She says, "I'm sick less. And I do see that the kids are sick less."

Pima County's program is considered a model for the state. It's also received national attention.

The program is funded by an initiative that Arizona voters passed in 2006. That funding is up for voters' review again this November.