Informing School Policies and Practices to Ensure Access to Free High-Quality Drinking Water to Reduce Children’s Consumption of Sugary Beverages

Little empirical research has been done to support policies that increase access to free drinking water as part of comprehensive strategies to reduce consumption of sugary beverages and prevent childhood obesity. This study will examine beverage environments in 20 diverse high schools in King County, Wash., to guide the development of effective school water policies More

Children’s School-Related Food and Physical Activity Behaviors are Associated with Body Mass Index

This paper examines the associations between the food and physical activity environment in schools and body mass index (BMI) for lower-income boys and girls when they were in the 8th grade during 2007. Analyzing secondary data from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), researchers found that a number of More

Evaluating School Wellness Policies Following Implementation of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010: Updating the Wellness School Assessment Tool (WellSAT)

The primary aim of this project is to revise and update the content and format of the WellSAT (Wellness School Assessment Tool, www.wellsat.org), an online quantitative measure for evaluating the quality of school wellness policies. Originally launched in 2009, the website has had thousands of visitors across all 50 states, and is used by policy-makers, More

Effects of Changes in Lunch-Time Competitive Foods, Nutrition Practices, and Nutrition Policies on Low-Income Middle-School Children’s Diets

This article discusses the results of the School Nutrition Advances Kids (SNAK) project which examined the effectiveness of various nutrition interventions on the diets of lower-income middle school students in Michigan. Schools were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups: 1) completed an assessment of nutrition education policies and environments using the Healthy School More

Using a Bid Database to Study the Nutritional Quality of Competitive Foods in Schools and Establish a Baseline for Evaluating New USDA Guidelines

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently proposed new standards for snack (competitive) foods in schools, similar to the Competitive Foods Guidelines developed by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. This project will objectively track changes in snack food purchasing among K-12 public schools as a result ofthese standards. The aims of this work are to More