Introduction
Altogether, partner cities in the Healthy Wave have a lot of experience with organizing healthy school lunches for children in Europe. But what factors contribute to or counteract the success of these lunches and are these factors related to each other? Researchers from the Public Health Department of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, set up a research plan to answer those questions. Curious how we will do that? Read more!
Read more
Healthy eating is important for all children. A healthy diet is important to prevent chronic diseases later in life, and healthy food at schools can contribute to healthier eating habits. A lot of European countries already provide school lunches. However, aspects like dietary quality, organization or implementation might vary between schools, cities and countries. With the research in Healthy Wave, we want to raise our understanding of the whole system involved in the provision of healthy school lunches in Europe.
In addition to being a facilitator in the Healthy Wave project, Erasmus MC is also the one leading the research part. During study visits in the mentor cities, we organize workshops with local stakeholders (e.g. teachers, municipal officers, parents, nutritionist, etc.) and Healthy Wave partners to investigate the important factors for a healthy school lunch in the mentor city. What are the conditions to successfully implement a healthy school lunch in their city? Who do they need? What are the consequences when children eat the healthy school lunch? Do they see effects? Various factors will be identified and hypothesized causal relationships will be visualized in a map, a so-called causal loop diagram.
Although we will make a start with this map during the study visits in our mentor cities, this process takes time. While writing this newsletter, we have just had our first study visit in Almada (Portugal). The coming months, more study visits in Milano (Italy), Cluj (Romania), and Gothenburg (Sweden) will follow. So, also many more workshops to go!
After each study visit, we will further develop the map and add new factors and identified relationships. The visualized map will be thoroughly discussed with relevant parties, like local stakeholders and the partner cities of Healthy Wave. In the end, the causal loop diagram might help other cities and countries (in Europe) to identify which factors might be important to successfully implement a healthy school lunch for all children.
The resulting causal loop diagram will be part of the toolbox of the Healthy Wave project and might be presented in a scientific article. To be continued…
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