From hot dog days to donut fundraisers; journeying into the school nutrition environment

I am excited to learn more about what can be done to improve school nutrition environments.  My interest and experience in this area grew while working as the coordinator of student nutrition programs (SNPs) for southwestern public health in Ontario.  I also have a son in elementary school and am able to experience the impact of the current school nutrition environment on him.  I think a lot of adults likely remember the days of vending machines and hot dog days in schools and many of us (myself included) may think that schools have improved in this area.  I experienced a paradigm shift, however, while working in public health in the sense that I actually believe things that on the whole, we are worse off.  One of the biggest challenges is that despite the fact there are multiple documents, guidelines and even laws that school boards in Ontario are supposed to follow, there is little awareness, accountability or repercussions to ensure schools are following them (Vine et al., 2017).

My personal learning goals are the following;

-To come away with a deeper understanding of where advocacy efforts to improve school nutrition environments are best delivered.

-To gain an understanding of successful interventions for improving school nutrition environments

-To gain an understanding of the long-term impact on improving the school nutrition environment on the health of this population.

I am most excited to learn about successful interventions and the impact on the health of youth.  In my experience, there is significant risk of harm when working with youth directly on interventions focused to improve health.  I have personally worked with youth who took nutrition messages delivered by parents, teachers, and even dietitians that was well intended, resulting in disordered eating behaviors.  For this reason, I believe that health promotion strategies delivered to youth should be delivered at a population level whenever possible, and always with a careful lens to ensure the context of the message is well understood. 

I think what makes me nervous is that I might find out that interventions on school nutrition environments do not have as significant of an impact on the health of our youth as I hypothesized. For example, if I had a magic wand and created the healthiest school possible- fruit bowls at every teachers desk, school cafeterias serving only health options, fundraisers and special days where the focus was on health and well-being as opposed to donut sales and hot dog trucks in the school yard- would this even cause a ripple in health status or disease prevention in this population?

The biggest challenge I will face when pursuing my chosen topic will be remaining objective.  I think because of my experience in working with youth 1-1 providing nutrition counselling, I hold bias towards what I believe are the causes of some of the nutrition related problems seen in youth now.  I plan to lean on the current evidence as opposed to my own opinions as much as possible and reflect on any conclusions I draw in order to lessen this bias.

References

Vine, M. M., Harrington, D. W., Butler, A., Patte, K., Godin, K., & Leatherdale, S. T. (2017). Compliance with school nutrition policies in Ontario and Alberta: An assessment of secondary school vending machine data from the COMPASS study. Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique, 108(1), e43–e48. https://doi.org/10.17269/cjph.108.5701