Poor nutrition and inadequate WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) practices significantly impact children’s health, nutrition, and cognitive development, especially in low-income settings.
School meal programs are a widely implemented safety net with documented impacts across social protection, education, health and nutrition and high estimated returns to investment (Alderman et al., 2024).
Free school meals feed more than 400 million children worldwide, making them the largest social programme in history. But how effective are they? And should even more governments provide free school meals?
In June 2025, the government announced that, from the start of the 2026 school year, every pupil whose household is on Universal Credit will be entitled to free school meals.
Across Africa, health taxes – that is, excise duties on tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) – represent one of the most underutilised but promising domestic revenue sources available to African governments.
En esta publicación se presenta un estudio de caso sobre 16 países de América Latina. El objetivo es proporcionar una visión general sobre los progresos en la ejecución de los programas de alimentación escolar, considerando los componentes esenciales para la sostenibilidad de dichos programas.
En esta publicación se presenta un análisis de la historia de la cooperación internacional entre la FAO y el gobierno de Brasil durante los últimos 15 años.
El objetivo del estudio es brindar lineamientos para la construcción de un sistema integral de alimentación escolar en el Perú, a partir del análisis de experiencias nacionales e internacionales y de la evidencia disponible sobre eficacia, cobertura y costo-efectividad de los modelos existentes.
This booklet has been developed to support the effective implementation of the Ethiopian School Feeding Program, specifically designed for primary school children.
This guidance provides practical strategies to implement and strengthen school health services (SHS) as part of a whole-school approach. It serves as the implementation guidance for the WHO Guideline on School Health Services, translating evidence-based recommendations into actionable steps.