Our study aims to gather information on how states, territories, and Washington, DC, communicated with jurisdictions effectively to provide time-sensitive information on school meal programs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Gabriella McLoughlin, research fellow at the Prevention Research Center and at the Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

None of the jurisdictions studied “executed a comprehensive plan to address [pandemic-related] food insecurity,” says McLoughlin, lead author of the study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

Understanding jurisdictions’ approaches to meal provisions is critical to current and future emergency planning to help address food insecurity better, limit disease transmission, and prevent health disparities, particularly among at-risk populations, McLoughlin says.

McLoughlin and colleagues assessed jurisdictions on the comprehensiveness of seven criteria in crisis communication with internal and external stakeholders. The criteria included mentions of school or meal provisions in emergency declarations, references to meal provisions in school closure announcements, school meal sites, and emergency meal service implementation guidance.

Results showed that most jurisdictions mentioned school meal provisions in school closure announcements (76.4%), provided easily intepretable information and/or maps about meal sites (57.9%), and included detailed information about school meal provisions in their coronavirus disease landing web pages (51%).

Read the full article about child nutrition and food security by Neil Schoenherr at Futurity.