Page 47 - ON THE WAY TO HEALTHIER SCHOOL CANTEENS - Irma Evenhuis

Theme
Schools conditions
Environmental conditions
Related factor a
- Having positive finances in a feasible business model (quote 11).
- Having and perceiving sufficient time, money, employees and facilities to work towards a healthier school canteen (quote 12).
- Having confidence and good relationship between school and caterer.
- Collaboration between nearby food providers and school (quote 13).
- Having broad support in all school
activities (quote 14).
- Providing a canteen that can compete
with food provisions outside school.
Related quote from the interviews
(11): “I notice that there are no revenue targets for a school. Actually, the goal is to break even, the canteen should not cost money. But the caterer has a revenue model because they need to earn a living.”
(12): “Sometimes you lack time, and then you get a “It’s okay like this” attitude.”
(13): “I think it is mission impossible if there
are supermarkets around the school that sell
all sorts of tempting stuff, but you cannot 3 close your school.”
(14): “I also think it depends on location.
It depends on whether there are a lot of tempting places in the area or none at all, but a closed square policy would be the best.”
a In bold, the factors prioritized highest in the expert meeting.
Step 2: Prioritization of factors
Factors were prioritized according to the stage of change a school could be in (i.e. awareness, preparation or action). For the awareness stage, experts emphasized the importance that involved stakeholders are motivated, enthusiastic and have a positive attitude towards creating a healthy canteen. Next, consensus was reached that, at the preparation stage, stakeholders need insight into the current canteen’s/organizational situation, and that the stakeholders in the school need support from students, parents and colleagues. The management need to facilitate this support. Finally, it was mentioned that, at the action stage, stakeholders need to be able to apply the knowledge to create a healthy, balanced canteen with regard to the offering and accessibility. In addition, they need to be able to create a financial plan, to maintain the intended policy and to collaborate with students, parents and teachers.
For the whole process of creating a healthier school canteen, the experts emphasized that it is important: to create ownership by stakeholders in the school; to assign responsible people to each action in the school; that involved stakeholders receive support from their organization; and to involve multiple stakeholders in each school in the implementation process, including a visible, committed leader and students. To achieve this, they discussed possible activities to inform step 3, such as measuring the current level of the canteen, providing tailored advice, providing examples of healthy canteens and healthier products, and enabling schools to share their experiences to learn from each other’s successes and challenges. These options were taken into account in step 3.
Step 3: Development of implementation strategies and tools
Describing the prioritized factors as objectives, we translated them into behavioural change methods, implementation strategies and finally specified them into implementation tools (Figure 3.2). These steps led to multiple implementation tools, that are a combination of adapted existing and new developed tools. These are outlined in Table 3.2: a questionnaire to assess the schools’ and stakeholders’ context, an online ‘Canteen Scan’, an advisory
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