Research Interests

• School Food Programs, International
• Canadian School Food Programs
• Farm-to-School (F2S) Programs
• Food Policy
• Participatory Action Research

• Public Food Procurement
• Economic Development
• Sustainable Food Systems
• Local/Regional Food Systems
• Child Health

Research Projects

• Canadian School Food Program Survey

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  In collaboration with renown school food policy scholar Dr. Mary McKenna, I surveyed Canadian government ministries and departments that fund school food programs to create the first national baseline of programmatic coverage in 2018/19.

  In June 2019, I was honoured to participate in the Government of Canada’s first roundtable on developing a National School Food Program to discuss preliminarily results from the 2018/19 Canadian School Food Program Survey.

  

  In November 2020, results from the Canadian School Food Survey were presented in a webinar co-hosted by Nutrition Connections and the Arrell Food Institute.

   

  

• Linking Farm and School in New Regional Agri-Food Value Chains

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  Three year project funded by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) evaluating the economic impact of farm-to-school programs in Ontario.

  

  I had the pleasure to discuss my research with the Honourable Patty Hadju, former Federal Minister of Employment, Workforce and Labour at a University of Guelph roundtable on February 14, 2019.

  

  To learn more about my research, click the image about to read my article in the Conversation Canada.

• School Food Around the World: Lessons for Canada

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  Over 388 million children in at least 161 countries – 83% of all countries globally – receive free or subsidized school meals at school, according to the World Food Programme.  Canada is one of the only members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) without a national school food program.  We, members of the Canadian Coalition for Healthy School Food in partnership with George Brown College, are keen to learn from experts and leaders in other jurisdictions about how their school food programs operate to bring back innovative best practices to inform the creation of a world-class National School Food Program.

  This webinar series will delve into how other countries implement their programs, how they are funded/cost-shared, and monitored by different levels of government and external stakeholders. The focus of this webinar series will be on pre-pandemic and cornerstone practices that sustain innovative and comprehensive school food programs. However, some important aspects of pandemic-induced programmatic improvements, investments and expansions will be investigated.

             

• A Survey of Canadian Organizations and Agencies Providing Food to School Students During COVID-19

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  Since schools started to close in March 2020 in response to COVID-19, many organizations are continuing to provide food for school students (and in some cases, their families) across the country.

  To help capture information about these important efforts, Dr. Rachel Engler-Stringer, Dr. Mary McKenna and I launched a short survey. The information collected will provide a clearer picture of strategies for food provision and valuable information to inform future planning.   

  For more information, please read our guest blog post on the Coalition for Healthy School Food’s website.