Research Webinar Series: School-based Interventions in the 21st Century: Evidence Gaps and Future Directions

School meals have re-emerged as a global priority for improving child health, education, and well-being, with these meals now reaching at least 407 million children globally. These programs can also play an important role in food systems transformation by ensuring access to healthy diets, supporting equitable livelihoods, and contributing to environmental sustainability. With rising food insecurity, increasing demands on education systems, and the growing need for inclusive, sustainable development, school meal programs offer a unique opportunity to deliver multiple wins across sectors. 

The Global Survey of School Meal Programs ©, implemented by the Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF), collects the world’s most comprehensive data on national and large-scale school feeding programs, with information on 167 countries. The survey provides a foundation for monitoring global progress over time. However, many important questions about school meal programs remain unanswered. What models work best, in what contexts, and for whom? How can programs be designed to deliver both immediate and long-term benefits? What evidence do countries need to ensure their investments are cost-effective, equitable, and sustainable?  

About the Webinar Series

This webinar series features school meal experts and practitioners from around the globe who highlight promising practices, critical evidence gaps, and future research directions for school meal programs. The series explores how this research can be applied, translated into policy, and used to improve data systems.

This series builds upon a 2-day workshop held in January 2025, where IFPRI and development partners identified six key themes around which additional evidence generation efforts are needed. Each session will address one or more of these themes:

• Situation and context analysis: reach, beneficiaries, school food environments
• Processes and implementation: procurement and delivery models
• Effectiveness and impact: multiple benefits, meal quality, sustainability, tradeoffs
• Cost effectiveness and return on investment: cost-efficiency and true costs
• Policy processes and evidence uptake: scaling, partnerships, advocacy
• Methods and metrics: generating high-quality data for decision-making

Webinars in this Series

• Sept 11, 2025 (10–11:30 a.m. ET) — The Economy-wide Impacts of School Meal Programs: Generating evidence on return on investment — Speakers: Aulo Gelli (IFPRI), Harold Alderman (IFPRI), Gloria Folson (University of Ghana)
• Oct 1, 2025 (10 a.m. ET) — Optimizing School Food Environments: Integrating new food and nutrient standards with aspects of affordability, cultural acceptability and environmental sustainability — Speakers: Arlene Mitchell (GCNF), Patricia Eustachio Colombo (Karolinska Institutet)
• Oct 16, 2025 (10 a.m. ET) — School Meal Programs and Regenerative Agriculture: Generating evidence on sustainability tradeoffs — Speakers: Ryan Nehring (IFPRI), Kristin Davis (IFPRI), Felipe Albuquerque (FNDE)
• Oct 30, 2025 (10 a.m. ET) — What’s on the Menu? Collecting high-quality data to inform school menu decision-making — Speakers: Ayala Wineman (GCNF), Aisha Kante (Johns Hopkins CLF), Zanda Mihailovska (Ministry of Health, Latvia)
• Nov 19, 2025 (10 a.m. ET) — Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF): Evaluating the Impacts of HGSF Procurement and Delivery Models — Speakers: Heidi Kessler (GCNF), Hun Sovannara (Government of Cambodia), Benedetta Lerva (The World Bank)
• Dec 10, 2025 (10 a.m. ET) — The Economywide Impacts of School Meal Programs in Ghana and Malawi — Speakers: Karl Pauw (IFPRI)
• Jan 14, 2026 (10 a.m. ET) — Increasing Effectiveness of School Meals in Humanitarian Settings: Situation & Context Analysis — Speakers: Arlene Mitchell (GCNF), Evan Anthony (Georgetown University)
• Jan 28, 2026 (10 a.m. ET) — Evidence-Informed Impact: Unpacking the Untapped Potential of the School Feeding Labor Force — Speakers: Aulo Gelli (IFPRI), Simone Lombardini (WFP)