Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) director and cooperative extension specialist Lorrene Ritchie commented on why school meals matter now more than ever as the United States is grappling with two major public health crises, the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism and inequities. The invited commentary was published online on August 20, 2020 in the journal Public Health Nutrition. Ritchie's commentary describes how the USDA National School Lunch Program (NSLP), which provided over 4.8 billion lunches to nearly 30 million children in the US during the 2018-2019 school year, supports improved food security for all students. This is important as students from lower income non-Hispanic Black or Hispanic families who have higher rates of participation in the NSLP than their non-minority counterparts. Given the historic levels of food insecurity Americans are now facing due to the COVID-19-related economic downturn, and the disproportionate effect it is having on black families, Ritchie also cites the importance of the NSLP in supporting health equity through improved nutrition. Ritchie shares evidence from a recent nationally representative study conducted by colleagues at Boston University School of Medicine which shows that NSLP participating students' diet quality improved after the school meal nutrition standards were updated in 2012-2013 to align with the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as mandated by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010. Ritchie closes her commentary requesting public health researchers, practitioners and policy makers (1) object to any rollbacks to the HHFKA nutrition standards, and (2) advocate for school meals to be made available to all students without additional charge. The commentary is available online.
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) partnered with Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics to develop a series of fact sheets to support the provision of nutritious and sustainable school meals during the COVID-19 pandemic. NPI's Christina Hecht led development of the fact sheets that are targeted to school nutrition professionals, school boards, and advocacy organizations. The fact sheets distill the latest on the USDA Child Nutrition Program waivers that have provided flexibility for school districts, allowing them to maximize their meal service despite COVID-19 disruptions including school closures and supply chain problems. Each fact sheet in the series addressed a specific challenge: how to continue meal service during “spring break,” provision of school meals over the summer, and the transition to “back to school” school re-opening scenarios. The fact sheets also provide tips and resources from the field, aiming to encourage school districts to take full advantage of the USDA flexibilities to maintain meal quality and build student participation in the meal programs. As one example, when providing “grab & go” meals while schools are closed, districts can aid families, keep meals fresh, and reduce waste by providing “bulk foods.” By using the waivers for non-congregate feeding and meal times, a district could provide a weekly sack of foods equivalent to the amounts and nutritional requirements normally provided by single meals. Bulk food provision can reduce the use of pre-packaged one-portion items, for example substituting a fresh melon for individual fruit cups. It can also minimize the number of trips a family needs to make to pick up school meals and it can support use of fresh and local produce. Fact sheets were designed for California districts and for a national audience; the latter were co-branded by the School Nutrition Association (SNA) and provided to SNA's 53,000 members. Template versions make it easy to pull and co-brand the information to target specific regions. The fact sheets and modifiable templates are available for download at the links below.
"Back-to-School” Fact Sheet:
- Back-to-School: We'll Keep Feeding Those Kids! UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute. Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics. School Nutrition Association. 12 August 2020. [Download (PDF)]
“Summer Meals” Fact Sheets:
- Calling all Districts! USDA Summer Meals Can Keep Kids Healthy (National version). UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute. Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics. School Nutrition Association. 20 June 2020. [Download (PDF)] [Download Template (Word document)]
- Calling all Districts! USDA Summer Meals Can Keep Kids Healthy (California version). UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute. Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Updated 20 June 2020. [Download (PDF)] [Download Template (Word document)]
"Spring Break” Fact Sheets:
- Kids' Hunger Doesn't Take a Spring Break. While closed for COVID-19, school districts can serve meals over spring break (National version). UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute. Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics. 2 April 2020. [Download (PDF)] [Download Template (Word document)]
- Kids' Hunger Doesn't Take a Spring Break. While closed for COVID-19, California districts can serve meals over spring break. UC ANR Nutrition Policy Institute. Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics. 1 April 2020. [Download (PDF)] [Download Template (Word document)]
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
The National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs help reduce food insecurity and improve nutrition for school-aged children. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows schools with high levels of children in poverty to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all students. It was introduced through the bi-partisan Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 to increase participation of low- to moderate-income students in the federal school meals programs. The CEP automatically reimburses schools for a fixed percentage of meals corresponding with their poverty level, making universal meals financially viable by reducing administrative costs and improving economies of scale in meal preparation and distribution. Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) researchers' latest study suggests that when high-poverty schools implement CEP, participation in the school breakfast and lunch programs for students who are near or above the cut-off for free or reduced priced meals increases. Data for the study came from the 2013-2014 Healthy Communities Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health. NPI researchers compared 842 kindergarten through eighth-grade students from 80 schools implementing CEP to 1,463 students from 118 schools without CEP. The study was published on August 4, 2020 in the Journal of School Health by lead author May Lynn Tann of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Evidence for Action program at the University of California (UC), San Francisco. Additional study authors include Barbara Laraia and Kristine Madsen of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Rucker Johnson of the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy, and Lorrene Ritchie of the Nutrition Policy Institute. The study abstract is available online. For full access to the study, please email may.lynn.tan@ucsf.edu.
The Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) submitted on April 22, 2020 comments in strong opposition to the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) “Simplifying Meal Service and Monitoring Requirements in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs” proposed rule. The proposed rule would roll back nutrition standards in both the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. For nearly twenty years, researchers at the NPI and its predecessor organization have engaged in research and evaluation to improve nutrition policy in California and the nation, with special emphasis on the challenges for low-income children in accessing a healthy diet. "Today, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, these challenges have been greatly magnified," commented NPI Policy Director Ken Hecht. "The numbers of unemployed low-income families whose children need nutrition assistance has grown exponentially at the very time when schools, the operating site for most child nutrition programs, are closed. Fortunately, Congress and the USDA have acted quickly to expand and ease access to the essential food programs. Unfortunately, the proposed rules to which these comments are addressed seem largely counterproductive to children's health and well being and unresponsive to the pandemic."
Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) and UC Berkeley School of Public Health researchers published a new study in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) on the impact of a multi-component intervention to increase students' lunch participation in SFUSD public middle and high schools. The study, titled "The Impact of a Multipronged Intervention to Increase School Lunch Participation among Secondary School Students in an Urban Public School District" was published in Childhood Obesity by UC Berkeley researchers Hannah Thompson and Kristine Madsen; NPI's Wendi Gosliner and Lorrene Ritchie; UC Berkeley doctoral alumna Annie Reed; and SFUSD's Orla O'Keefe and Kate Wobbekind. Data are from a 3-year quasi-randomized study among 24 secondary schools, half of which received an intervention including cafeteria redesign, additional school lunch points-of-sale (mobile carts and vending machines), and teacher education. This research was funded by USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program.
