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 directly in the community. Understanding the strategies SFAs used to implement community distribution programs for school meals and identifying what kinds of support are needed for success can inform better planning for future crises that may cause disruptions to school meals. This brief summarizes the results from a study that investigated how food service directors from 12 of the largest SFAs in the United States tackled the challenge of providing school meals when school was out and how this “stress test” on the school meal system revealed ways to potentially strengthen the financial model for SFAs in the future.
Published: January 2022
Publisher: Healthy Eating Research
Authors: Kenney EL, Fleischhacker S, Dai J, Mozaffarian RS, Wilson K, West J, Shen Y, Dunn CG, Bleich SN
State: National
Focus Areas: Nutrition Policy & Programs, School & After School
Resource Type: Research Brief
Keywords: School meal programs, Urban
Related Research
March 2024
Associations of Increased WIC Benefits for Fruits and Vegetables With Food Security and Satisfaction by Race and Ethnicity
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides nutrition support for racially and ethnically diverse populations. In 2021, the monthly cash value benefit (CVB) for the purchase of fruits and vegetables increased from $9 to $35 and was later adjusted to $24. This study investigated, by racial and ethnic groups, whether MoreJanuary 2024
WIC Fruit and Vegetable Study
The Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition was funded by Healthy Eating Research to conduct a study exploring how the policy changes in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) cash value benefit (CVB), or fruit and vegetable money, during the pandemic impacted the WIC program and child access to fruits and MoreNovember 2023