Evaluation of Vermont School Wellness Policies

Obesity among youth is a complicated public health and education challenge in Vermont and across the United States. In addition to detrimental health consequences, youth obesity negatively impacts quality of life and learning potential. School-based child wellness practices, including healthful eating and physical activity, have great potential to maximize academic success. To support positive change and to address the problem of child obesity, federal and Vermont state legislation require that schools adopt and implement a School Wellness Policy (SWP) that dictates a healthy learning environment for students. This study was designed to evaluate the quality of SWPs from a geographically stratified sample of 25 Vermont high schools. The Wellness School Assessment Tool (WellSAT) was used to measure and compare the comprehensiveness and strength of SWPs. The mean score for overall comprehensiveness of SWPs is 30.8 and the mean score for overall strength is 15.7 for the 25 Vermont high schools in this sample. These scores fall much below the highest possible score of 100 points. Among the schools in this sample, policies scored more points for items related to Standards for USDA Child Nutrition Programs and School Meals, and for items related to policy evaluation. Schools serving a larger proportion of students living in poverty have higher quality SWPs than schools with fewer students living in poverty. Schools serving only students in grades nine-12 have lower quality polices than schools serving a broader grade-level distribution of students. The findings suggest that Vermont SWPs may be weaker than those from a national sample, although differences in sampling and other study design characteristics may contribute to this disparity. Based on these findings, it is suggested that Vermont schools may benefit from state agency, and community-based organization supports to address child obesity and improve learning. In the long term, a continuous improvement framework for school wellness, with periodic policy assessment at multiple points is recommended. Finally, future research studies are proposed, including replication of this type of study for the full range of grades in Vermont, as well as further research on the use of the WellSAT.Master of Public Healt