JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Good nutrition impacts children’s health, wellbeing and learning, and schools offer an important setting to promote healthy behaviors that can last a lifetime. Once children reach school age, they spend more of their waking hours in school than in any other environment. Children’s eating habits may be easier to influence than those of adults. In Canada, households with children are more likely to experience food insecurity, and school food programs that are universally available to all children can support the development of healthy eating patterns across groups of varying socioeconomic status. There is a significant gap in rigorous community-engaged academic research on the impact of school meal programs, especially universal ones.

Objective:

The purpose of this population health intervention research is to study the impacts of a two-year universal, curriculum-integrated healthy school lunch program in elementary schools in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada on food consumption, dietary quality and food and nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes and practices.

Methods:

This population health intervention study will take place in two intervention elementary schools matched with two control schools. We will collect pre-intervention data including objective measurement of food eaten at school and food-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. This will be followed by the intervention itself along with qualitative case studies of the intervention process in the two intervention schools. Then we will collect post-intervention data similar to pre-intervention. Finally, we will wrap up data analysis and complete the ongoing sharing of learning from the project.

Results:

This study was funded in April 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic data collection did not begin until May 2021. The intervention will begin in September 2021 and end in June 2023, with endpoint data collection occurring in May and June 2023. The case study research will begin in September 2021 and will be ongoing for the duration of the intervention.

Conclusions:

The opportunity we have to systematically and comprehensively study a curriculum-integrated school lunch program, as well as the promising practices for school food programs across Canada is without precedent.