48 The impact of school food programs on food insecurity among children
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Food insecurity is a pressing issue affecting 18% of households in Canada and 12.8% in the US, with children disproportionately impacted. In 2022, 1.8 million children in Canada and 7.3 million in the US experienced food insecurity, which is linked to poor nutrition, behavioral problems, and increased healthcare use. School food programs (SFPs) offer a potential solution by providing consistent access to nutritious food for children, especially those in low-income communities. However, since Canada lacks a national SFP, programs are fragmented and locally administered leading to in inconsistent access and quality across regions. Objectives The objective of this study is to examine the association between regular participation in SFPs and food insecurity among children. We conducted a prospective cohort study from January 2023 to June 2024 at the REACH School Network, a school-based health centre program serving at-risk students from 180 elementary schools in low-income neighbourhoods within the Toronto District School Board. We hypothesized that children who use SFPs regularly experience lower levels of food insecurity compared to those who do not. Design/Methods We administered a parent-reported Growth and Nutrition Questionnaire adapted from the Canadian Community Health Survey. Food insecurity was assessed using the Hunger Vital Sign tool, and participation in SFPs was determined based on parental reports of school program availability and usage frequency. Logistic regression was used to examine the association between SFP participation and food insecurity. Results We obtained a sample of 233 participants. Children’s mean age was 9.3 years (SD=3.0) and 154 (69.1%) were identified as male. One hundred and fifty-four (35.5%) participants had an annual household income under $50,000. Ninety-seven parents (43.5%) reported being food insecure, with a higher proportion in those with children regularly participating in SFPs (44.8%) compared to those not participating (41.6%). There was insufficient evidence that regular participation in school-based meal programs was associated with food insecurity (OR = 1.14; 95 % CI (0.66, 1.97); p-value = 0.637). Conclusion Our findings suggest that regular participation in SFPs was not associated with food insecurity among children. Although SFPs are designed to reduce hunger and promote growth and development, our study highlights the complexity of the issue, where broader systemic factors such as income, access, and program consistency may also play critical roles. Further research is needed to explore how SFPs can be optimized to more effectively address food insecurity, particularly in low-income communities.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".