The Nutrition and Brain Health Laboratory, The Institute of Biochemistry Food Science and Nutrition, The Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 76100, Rehovot, Israel.
The Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, The Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 9112102, Jerusalem, Israel.
Isr J Health Policy Res. 2022 Feb 15;11(1):13. doi: 10.1186/s13584-022-00523-y.
Even in high-income countries like Israel, children have been particularly vulnerable to the surge in food insecurity driven by quarantines, unemployment, and economic hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, School Feeding Programs (SFPs) can help to ensure child food security. In the wake of the pandemic, policy makers worldwide have been challenged to adapt national SFPs to provide nutritional support to children (and indirectly to their families) during extended school closures. Most national SFPs implemented contingency plans to ensure continued nutritional support for children. In Israel, where SFPs were largely suspended during long periods of mandated school closing, there was a loss of 30-50% of feeding days for the ~ 454,000 children enrolled in the program. The lack of emergency contingency planning and failure to maintain Israeli SFPs during school closures reveals longstanding structural policy flaws that hindered coordination between relevant ministries and authorities and impeded the mobilization of funds and existing programs to meet the emergent need. The school feeding law does not identify child food security as an explicit aim, there are no benchmarks for monitoring and evaluating the program to ensure that the food aid reaches the children most in need, even routinely, and the Ministry of Education had no obligation to maintain the program and to marshal data on the participants that could be acted upon in the emergency. Moreover, because Israeli SFPs are "selective", in other words, implemented according to community risk (low-income, high poverty rate) and geographical factors, attendant stigma and financial burdens can make participation in the program less attractive to families and communities that need them the most. We argue that Israel should make urgent, long-term improvements to the SFPs as follows: First, eliminating childhood food insecurity should be made an explicit goal of legislation in the broader context of national social, health, and nutritional goals, and this includes ensuring SFPs are maintained during emergencies. Second, the government should assume responsibility for the routine assessment and data collection on food insecurity among Israeli children. Third, SFPs should be subjected to rigorous independent program evaluation. Finally, a "universal" SFP providing nutritious diets would likely improve the health of all Israeli children, across all socioeconomic backgrounds. These steps to guarantee that Israeli children have food to realize their full physical and cognitive potential would emphasize Israel's firm commitment to support multiple dimensions of health, educational achievement, and societal values, to combat the complex and long-term consequences of the pandemic, and to prepare for the next one.
即使在像以色列这样的高收入国家，儿童也特别容易受到因隔离、失业和 COVID-19 大流行带来的经济困难而导致的粮食不安全问题的影响。在正常情况下，学校供餐计划可以帮助确保儿童的粮食安全。在大流行之后，世界各地的政策制定者都面临着调整国家学校供餐计划的挑战，以在学校长期关闭期间为儿童（间接为其家庭）提供营养支持。大多数国家的学校供餐计划都制定了应急计划，以确保继续为儿童提供营养支持。在以色列，由于学校长期关闭，学校供餐计划在很大程度上暂停，参加该计划的约 454000 名儿童的供餐天数减少了 30-50%。缺乏应急计划以及在学校关闭期间未能维持以色列学校供餐计划，这揭示了长期存在的结构性政策缺陷，这些缺陷阻碍了相关部委和当局之间的协调，并阻碍了为满足紧急需求而调动资金和现有计划。学校供餐法没有将儿童食品安全明确列为一个目标，也没有监测和评估该计划的基准，以确保即使是常规情况下，食品援助都能到达最需要的儿童手中，而教育部也没有义务维持该计划并收集可以在紧急情况下采取行动的参与者数据。此外，由于以色列的学校供餐计划是“选择性的”，也就是说，根据社区风险（低收入、高贫困率）和地理因素实施，因此随之而来的耻辱感和经济负担可能会使最需要该计划的家庭和社区对其参与意愿降低。我们认为，以色列应在以下方面紧急做出长期改进：首先，在更广泛的国家社会、健康和营养目标背景下，消除儿童粮食不安全问题应明确作为立法目标，这包括确保在紧急情况下维持学校供餐计划。其次，政府应承担起对以色列儿童粮食不安全状况进行例行评估和数据收集的责任。第三，学校供餐计划应接受严格的独立方案评估。最后，提供营养饮食的“普遍”学校供餐计划可能会改善所有以色列儿童的健康状况，无论其社会经济背景如何。这些保障以色列儿童获得食物以实现其身体和认知潜力的措施，将强调以色列对支持健康的多个方面、教育成就和社会价值观的坚定承诺，以应对大流行带来的复杂和长期影响，并为下一次大流行做好准备。
