Webinar Recording: SDP Universal School Meals study

Addressing food insecurity among school-aged youth remains a national and local priority; since 2013 the School District of Philadelphia has provided free breakfast and lunch at no charge to families in order to prevent hunger and improve access to healthy foods in students. However, participation in these programs is lower than anticipated with roughly 70% of students participating in lunch and 30-40% in breakfast. The Temple Community-Driven Implementation Science lab partnered with the school district to help identify ways to innovate school meals to reach more students and address hunger.

This webinar featured initial findings from a district-wide needs assessment of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), also known as Universal School Meals, which took place across the 2023-2024 academic year. The goals of this needs assessment were to 1) understand challenges and facilitators to implementing CEP, 2) learn experiences of students/families as key participants of the program, and 3) identify potential ways to improve implementation and student uptake in future years. We reported survey, interview, and observation data from 8 different schools (6 K-8; 2 HS) and 193 participants across participant types (i.e., students, parents, teachers, food service, administrators).