London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Join the Research Consortium for School Health & Nutrition in an exciting session led by our Impact & Evidence Community of Practice (COP), who will be sharing recent progress on their Cochrane Collaboration Systematic Review of School Meals and School Health. 

The Impact & Evidence COP, led by Professor Elizabeth Kristjansson of the University of Ottawa, is a voluntary network of school health thought leaders and practitioners from around the world interested in demonstrating the impact of effective school health and nutrition programmes through credible and independent research. 

You may be familiar with the last Cochrane Review on this topic, also led by Professor Kristjansson, which was published in 2007. Fifteen years later, Professor Kristjansson and the Impact & Evidence COP are due to publish a second Review, anticipated for September 2022. On 23 June, join the team to hear the latest developments in school meals and school health from around the world, including supplementary insights from the Global South.  

Crucially, the event will provide an opportunity for members of the Impact & Evidence COP to present questions that have emerged from the review process so far, including an opportunity to provide input on the research protocol. It will therefore be an interactive and collaborative event, with time reserved for audience participation, questions, and contributions. 

This session will be moderated by Carmen Burbano, Director of School-Based Programmes, World Food Programme (WFP).

Speakers  

Donald Bundy, LSHTM

Donald Bundy is Professor of Epidemiology and Development at LSHTM. He has worked for more than 30 years on the role of school health and nutrition programmes in the development of school-age children and adolescents, especially in low-income countries. He is the Director of the Global Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, and advisor to the World Food Programme in Rome, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation in London, the World Bank in Washington DC, and several national governments.  

Elizabeth Kristjansson, University of Ottawa and Impact & Evidence COP 

Dr Elizabeth (Betsy) Kristjansson is a Full Professor Centre for Research in Educational and Community Services, School of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa. She is a health measurement expert whose research focuses on the spatial dimensions of health and health inequalities, Photovoice and food insecurity. Another primary research interest is in systematic reviews on interventions to reduce socio-economic inequalities in health. 

Muna Osman, University of Ottawa 

Muna Osman is a researcher and facilitator specializing in social and cross-cultural psychology, ethnocultural diversity, and the psychosocial development of adolescents. She has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Ottawa and is published in leading journals such as Canadian Psychology and Psychology of Music. 

Francis Zotor, University of Health & Allied Sciences, Ghana 

Professor Francis B. Zotor is a public health nutrition and is a registered public health nutritionist. He is a recognized leader spanning over two decades in nutrition across Africa and has been instrumental in driving and promoting the establishment of a strong nutrition profession on the continent, training and research to underpin programme delivery especially across the health and education sectors in Africa. He serves on a number of national and international boards and societies associated with nutrition.

Elisabetta Aurino, University of Barcelona School of Economics 

Elisabetta is an economist with a focus on global food security issues, child and adolescent development, and food-related social protection programmes such as school feeding. Her work is highly multidisciplinary, lying at the intersection of food security and child & adolescent development, and aims at tackling key policy issues in the context of low and middle-income countries.  

Aulo Gelli, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) 

Aulo works as a senior research fellow in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division of the IFPRI. His main interests and experience intersect food policy and nutrition, with a particular focus on evaluating the impact of child health and nutrition interventions. His work at IFPRI includes a range of innovative mixed-method impact evaluations on nutrition-sensitive interventions scaled up through community-based platforms, including the first randomised trials on school and pre-school meal interventions linked to agriculture in Ghana, Malawi and Mali. 

Debbie Field, Coalition for Healthy School Food 

Debbie is the Coordinator of the Coalition for Healthy School Food. The Coalition is a group of more than 200+ non-profit organisations and networks that advocate for the development of a universal, cost-shared healthy School Food Program for Canada. A longstanding community activist in a variety of social movements, Debbie believes passionately in the power of grassroots campaigning. Debbie is also an Associate Member, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Toronto Metropolitan University. 

Carmen Burbano, WFP (moderator)

During her 16 years of experience with WFP, Carmen Burbano has focused on supporting governments to improve the nutrition, education and wellbeing of children. Specifically, she is interested in tackling the interrelated issues of malnutrition, poor health and learning and in strengthening the national safety net systems designed to address these issues. She has held management positions in Peru, Rome, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania; and provided temporary support to earthquake relief efforts in Haiti and Nepal.

Carmen Burbano is WFP’s world expert in school feeding. In this capacity, she has advised the governments of China, Colombia and Kenya, Ghana, among others, often in partnership with the World Bank.

You are invited to sign up to the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition’s mailing list so that you can receive occasional updates on the latest news, research, and events in school health and nutrition.

Please note that the recording link will be listed on this page when available