Recognizing and Supporting School Meal Programs as a Critical Nutrition Safety Net: Lessons from COVID-19

School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted children’s access to school meals in 2020 and 2021. School food service authorities (SFAs), which are responsible for planning, sourcing, preparing, and serving school meals, had to rapidly convert their usual on-site meal service operations to more flexible and mobile strategies to distribute meals to students More

Elementary Schools’ Response to Student Wellness Needs during the COVID-19 Shutdown: A Qualitative Exploration Using the R = MC2 Readiness Heuristic

During spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying public health advisories forced K-12 schools throughout the United States to suspend in-person instruction. School personnel rapidly transitioned to remote provision of academic instruction and wellness services such as school meals and counseling services. The aim of this study was to investigate how schools responded to More

Promoting Equitable Expansion of the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot

The USDA Online Purchasing Pilot, which allows SNAP participants to shop and pay for groceries online, rapidly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. From March 2020 to March 2021, the number of participating states increased from 5 to 47. This brief assesses whether the Pilot promotes healthy food access (using the criteria of availability and utilization) More

Retail Strategies to Support Healthy Eating

Healthy Eating Research (HER), Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and The Food Trust have developed the first national research agenda focused on healthy food retail. The research agenda is the result of a multi-step process, including commissioned research and a Healthy Retail Research convening, which More

Nutritional Problems in Childhood and Adolescence: A Narrative Review of Identified Disparities

To inform programs and policies that promote health equity, it is essential to monitor the distribution of nutritional problems among young individuals. Common nutritional problems include overall low diet quality, the underconsumption and overconsumption of certain dietary components, unhealthy meal and snack patterns, problematic feeding practices and disordered eating. The objective of the present narrative More

Studying facilitators and barriers in coupon redemption for fruits and vegetables by Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children participants

The Special Supplemental Nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federally-funded nutrition assistance program supporting low-income women, infants, and children. The Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) provides WIC clients with coupons to purchase fruits and vegetables from approved farmers markets in addition to their regular WIC benefits. Research is inconclusive about the More

Studying the Impact of Ecological Momentary Interventions on Sugary-Beverage Consumption by Children Through Age 2 in Low-Income Families

The first 1,000 days describes the period from pre-pregnancy through age 2 years, and is increasingly recognized as a critical period for development of childhood obesity. The overall goal of this study is to test mobile technology-based ecologic momentary interventions (EMIs) to deliver policy-relevant health messages among families living in Washington Heights, a low-income New More

Promoting Responsive Bottle-Feeding Practices Among Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Mothers to Reduce Infants’ Rapid Weight Gain and Obesity

Bottle-fed infants are at significantly greater risk for overfeeding and rapid weight gain (RWG), yet few studies focus on promoting healthy feeding practices for bottle-feeding caregivers. Bottle-feeding caregivers receive little support related to learning appropriate bottle-feeding practices, and this problem is pronounced in low-income, minority populations at higher risk for bottle-feeding, use of unhealthy feeding More

Evaluation of the USDA FINI Program Finds Benefits for Consumers, Farmers and Retailers, and Local Economies

In December 2018, Congress passed a new farm bill which included a reauthorization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) Grant Program. This brief summarizes the findings of a recent qualitative evaluation of FINI, which concludes that the program has benefits for consumers, farmers and retailers, and local economies. This More