In 2010, Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA), the first piece of legislation in over 30 years to include substantial reforms to school nutrition guidelines. Yet, no research has explored how the public dialogue about these new guidelines has unfolded at the state and local levels.

To better understand how advocates, the food industry, policymakers and others have shaped discussions about school nutrition guidelines since the passage of HHFKA, Berkeley Media Studies Group and the Public Health Advocacy Institute have been examining news coverage and legislative documents from ten states around the country. With support from the Healthy Eating Research Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we have explored how school food guidelines are framed, whose voices are included in news coverage, how the conversation differs among states, and how arguments and framing differ between news coverage and legislative and regulatory testimony and comments.

This Web Forum will include a summary of our findings, as well as a discussion of how they might inform future communications efforts around healthy school food environments at the state and local level. This one-hour event will be particularly valuable for professionals in education and public health working on creating healthy school food environments, particularly those who are interested in learning about how school food nutrition is currently being discussed, and lessons learned for future communications efforts.