Students pray before their lunch meal at a school in Mon State, Myanmar. School meal programmes are a crucial intervention in meeting nutrition needs from age 2 to 21 years. Photo credit: WFP/Yin Aye Nyein San
By Tsitsi Matope
The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, an Initiative of the School Meals Coalition, will join key stakeholders at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris, France, on March 27-28 to discuss bold actions to advance nutrition programmes. The Initiative will host side events to highlight the power of school meal programmes in advancing nutrition interventions, focusing on investing in the next 7,000 days of life (age 2-21 years).
In this interview, Dr. Robert Akparibo, Chair of the Nutrition Community of Practice at the Research Consortium, emphasizes the importance of increasing financing and partnerships to generate evidence that can strengthen support for nutrition programmes such as school meals. To advance this agenda, the Initiative is partnering with over 1,000 leading academics to help strengthen policy and programmes.
Q: The Research Consortium is spearheading the generation of evidence to strengthen support of nutrition policies and programmes focusing on the “next 7000 days”. Can you explain why this is important?
A: The nutrition community recognizes the first 1,000 days from conception to age two as crucial for long-term health and development due to rapid brain growth. Consequently, research and investment have focused heavily on this period, often neglecting the next 7,000 days. However, this phase is equally vital for shaping lifelong health outcomes, as it encompasses rapid physical and cognitive development and the formation of dietary habits. Nutrition during these stages significantly influences health, learning potential, economic productivity, and intergenerational health. Poor nutrition can lead to cognitive challenges, learning difficulties, and reduced future productivity.
It is critically why the Research Consortium is advocating for investments in nutrition policies and programmes targeting all “first 8,000 days”. This will boost data on the specific benefits, opportunities, and challenges. The Research Consortium collaborates with more than 1,000 leading academics worldwide to fill this gap and generate evidence for impactful interventions. The scale of this approach depends on creating a network of existing networks; in the case of nutrition, we are seeing this happen with key nutrition networks such as the African Nutrition Society, the Federation of African Nutrition Societies, and the National Institute of Nutrition in India.
Q: Can you share strategies various stakeholders can employ to advance the agenda for the next 7,000 days?
A: I will start with governments with a call to prioritize nutrition in public health policies, targeting children, adolescents and young people entering early adulthood Governments can integrate nutrition-sensitive approaches across sectors like education, agriculture, and health to ensure a holistic approach to improving nutrition interventions.
Development partners including donors and international and local non-governmental organizations play a crucial role in financing and providing technical assistance that ensures that research translates into actionable policies and provide resources for scaling up interventions globally.
Researchers and academics can strengthen the evidence base through high-quality studies, sharing data, and evaluating existing nutrition interventions. They are welcome to collaborate with the Research Consortium to ensure that research aligns with policy needs and provides actionable insights. Civil society and local communities play a critical role of ensuring that nutrition programmes are culturally relevant and accessible. Actions that focus on community engagement and advocacy on the importance of early-life nutrition raise awareness and promote more effective and sustainable nutrition programmes.
Q: You emphasize effective programmes targeting people under the age of 22, but many governments and partners face financial constraints. What programmes do you recommend countries to prioritise?
A: I would recommend investing in nutrition-sensitive school meal programmes. Evidence tells us that this is cost-effective, for every US dollar you invest in school meals you get between US$7 to US$35 in returns across sectors such as agriculture and health. These are programmes that provide children with nutritious food, stimulates agriculture and diverse production of food, creates opportunities to integrate health services and enable schools to foster a safe learning environment. School meals directly impact the nutrition, health, learning and well-being of children and adolescents, addressing prevalent malnutrition. Interventions are especially critical in areas experiencing food insecurity and where poor dietary habits are prevalent.
Ensuring children receive adequate nutrition through targeted programmes boosts their learning potential and academic success. This has profound longer-term effects on their personal development and economic outcomes. Longer-term nurturing of well-fed, healthy, and educated children can help countries to enhance human capital, driving innovation and productivity. Ultimately, this crucial investment in nutrition-sensitive school meals promote national development, leading to increased gross domestic product and a brighter future for all.
Q: When you talk about this significant impact of nutrition-sensitive school meal programmes, what key elements should the design of national programmes include for countries to fully realize their benefits?
A: It is important to realize that school meals are already a global reality which is extensively supported by governments worldwide. Currently, more than 400 million children are fed in school every day, about half of all the children who attend primary school. Importantly, the cost of these programmes is almost entirely covered by national domestic funds: the World Food Programme estimates that the world spends about US$ 48 billion on school meals annually, and that 98% of those funds are from domestic budgets.
The big challenge for nutrition is to ensure that those meals are nutritionally adequate, so importantly programmes should be integrated to comprehensively address the nutrition, health and safety needs of schoolchildren. It’s essential for the programme design to adopt a holistic and integrated approach, considering all factors that impact children’s well-being. They should prioritise high quality nutrition, incorporate micronutrient supplementation services, and embed nutrition education seamless school curriculum, rather than treating nutrition as an afterthought.
Sometimes in school meal discussions, actors forget how important water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions are in promoting children’s nutrition and health. These investments ensures that children have access to clean water and proper sanitation facilities. School meal programmes also provide an excellent opportunity for governments to integrate services such as deworming, immunisation, reproductive health and rights education, gender equality and girls’ education and mental health support. Ensuring active participation of children in the programmes design, implementation and evaluation gives them a sense of ownership. This engagement promotes lasting behavioural change and makes school meal programmes more meaningful and responsive to children’s needs.
One promising area in school meal programmes is how they build connections with various sectors and stakeholders. This includes local communities, parents, farmers, municipalities and other development partners non-governmental organisations and the private sector. Engaging local communities ensures that programmes are culturally relevant and supported, while partnerships with NGOs can enhance the quality and reach of nutrition services. Only through a collaborative approach that connects with multiple sectors, can school meal programmes be truly sustainable and contribute to the achievement of a healthier global future
Q: Let’s talk more about how the next 7,000 days research can support school meal programmes to meet the needs of all children, including those with chronic conditions and disabilities, mental health problems and overweight and obesity?
A: Current research is uncovering how chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular ailments, and physical and developmental disabilities impact children's nutritional needs and overall well-being. For instance, children with disabilities may require specialized diets to manage their conditions effectively. This evidence is crucial as it helps develop tailored nutrition and health interventions that cater to these children’s unique needs, ensuring they receive appropriate nutrition and accessible health services in schools.
We are also exploring how school health and nutrition programmes can be more inclusive for children with disabilities, ensuring that they have access to nutritious meals, health screenings, mental health support and other services. Our goal is to remove barriers children with disabilities may face in accessing all services.
Additionally, we are expanding our efforts to understand how the school food environment impacts children's nutrition and health. This includes studying factors such as unhealthy dietary patterns, lack of physical activity, and the social determinants of health.
The rise of challenges like obesity has driven us to research effective school-based programme designs that can really promote healthy eating, increase physical activity, and educate children on the importance of a balanced diet. We are also examining the role of family and community-based interventions in addressing issues like overweight and obesity.
However, several challenges remain in generating evidence to effectively address these needs, and a significant one is the data gap and underreporting. In many countries, particularly low- and middle-income ones, there is a lack of robust data on the nutritional needs and health conditions of children with chronic conditions and disabilities. This underreporting makes it difficult for governments to develop targeted interventions.
Moreover, many of the countries in need of targeted research on child nutrition and health face limited resources for conducting comprehensive studies. This can restrict the ability to generate contextually relevant evidence that can inform local policy and interventions. Integrating data from sectors like education and school meal programmes, health and agriculture can help create more holistic, effective solutions.