CHARACTERIZING THE SCHOOL FOOD ENVIRONMENT IN DOMINICA FOR HEALTH PROMOTION

Abstract

The school food environment, defined as, ‘when and where children obtain food and the types of options available during the school day’, has been identified as an ideal setting for health promotion efforts to support and promote healthy eating behaviours. However, characterizing the school food environment is a necessary first step to guide the development of health promotion initiatives. The purpose of this dissertation was to characterize the school food environment in Dominica for health promotion. Three research questions were addressed: 1) What types of food are sold and consumed in public primary schools in Dominica (Chapter 4-Study 1)? 2) What are the perceptions of stakeholders of the school food environment (Chapter 5-Study 2)? 3) How effective is a recipe challenge in providing children with opportunities to be agents of change in creating healthy food options to promote a healthy school food environment? (Chapter 6- Study 3)? Overall, this thesis took a multi-method research design. Data were collected in three phases through a variety of methods, including telephone survey and individual interviews with school principals, focus groups with school teachers, individual interviews with vendors, and individual interviews with personnel form government ministries of health and education, food frequency consumption survey among students and a recipe challenge. The findings suggest that 1) food outlets within the school food environment included tuck shops, vendors, shops, and school feeding programs; 2) a variety of commercially prepared and home-made snack foods were sold from the tuck shops and vendors; 3)stakeholders identified many barriers to healthy eating including parents and peers, food available at food outlets, and lack of a national school food policy and few facilitators to healthy eating including the school meal program and weekly held fruit days. The recipe contest was a modest success in demonstrating the potential for children to create foods options to promote a healthy school food environment. The study makes several recommendations for health promotion: government should capitalize on the food policy option for regulating the school food environment, and link local food production to schools and health promoters should empower children to be agents of change. Recommendations for future research are also provided.