Course:LFS250/Week 20
Overview
In this session, we will discuss school food environment assessments in preparation for your community-based experiential learning activity in which your group will be conducting data collection in public schools across Vancouver using the School Food Environment Assessment Tool (SFEAT).
Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should be able to:
- Conceptualize the basic components of a school food environment and where it fits in the larger picture of community food environments
- Discuss the purpose and possible outcomes of carrying out a school food environment assessment
- Articulate the process of carrying out a school food environment assessment
Key Terms + Concepts
- School food environment assessment
- Data collection
Required Readings + Resources
- Black, J. L., Velazquez, C. E., Ahmadi, N., Chapman, G. E., Carten, S., Edward, J., … Rojas, A. (2015). Sustainability and public health nutrition at school: assessing the integration of healthy and environmentally sustainable food initiatives in Vancouver schools. Public Health Nutrition, 18(13), 2379–2391.
Notes
School Food Environment Assessment
Within the BC Ministry of Education’s Comprehensive School Health (CSH) mandate are healthy school food and beverage environments. Food runs across all four pillars of CSH:
- Relationships and environment
- Teaching and learning
- Community partnerships
- School policies
- Comprehensive School Health in a Nutshell (Healthy Schools, BC. 2:02 minutes). In your opinion, where does the school food environment fit?
- Peruse this Healthy Schools BC website (in particular the programs and supports tab to get a sense of where school food environments fit within the BC Ministry of Education’s mandate of Comprehensive School Health.
Measuring the school food and beverage environment is a complex task, especially when the notion of environmental sustainability is incorporated. Researchers here at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems initially developed the School Food Environment Assessment Tool (SFEAT) back in 2009 as a community-based experiential learning activity for students in this course (LFS 250). That year, students visited all 109 elementary, secondary, alternative, and annex schools in the Vancouver School District (in the public system only, this scan did not include independent schools). In 2011-2012, as a formal initiative of the Think&EatGreen@School project, the SFEAT tool was revised and a team of researchers visited a smaller sample of schools.
The SFEAT conceptualizes school food environments using six key dimensions that reflect an idealized school food and beverage environment: (1) food production; (2) composting/waste management; (3) food preparation; (4) teaching and learning; (5) availability of healthy food; and (6) availability of sustainable food. SFEAT collects both quantitative and qualitative measures. What is novel about this school food assessment tool is that it incorporates in the notion of environmental sustainability rather than simply measuring what food and beverage items are available for students.
Collecting SFEAT data includes researcher observations and self-reporting by school staff (principals, garden coordinators, food service staff, etc). This year, students in LFS 250 will visit each school in the Vancouver school district.
Tutorial Session
In your tutorial session, your TA will guide you through the process of data collection with the SFEAT tool.
- 10-15mins - Review key themes from lecture (in groups then as a whole)
- 30 mins - Review Process - notifying school of arrival, consent forms, arriving as a group, making observations (walking around and through entire campus), estimating square footage, taking pictures, recording information, interview…
- 20 mins - Practice interviewing using the SFEAT
- 10 mins - Open Discussion on expectations for next two session (Field Work Sessions, March 1 + 8)
- 5 minutes - Exit Strategy - What do you want to gain from this experience?
Additional Material
This website is by the originators of the comprehensive school health concept, the World Health Organization. While this is an updated description of health promoting schools (referred to as Comprehensive School Health in Canada), the WHO first outlined this holistic concept in 1990s. Since then, schools around the world have incorporated the CSH/HPSs into their mandates. This mandate, to a great extent, includes healthy school food and beverage environments---- note that environmental sustainability is MOST OFTEN, to-date, not considered within the CSH framework.