Schools play an important role in promoting healthy diets and good nutrition and can create an enabling environment for children. However, the school food environment is often not conducive to a healthy diet. To address this challenge, and to support Member States in implementing policy measures, as recommended by the Framework for Action from the 2014 Second International Conference on Nutrition, the World Health Organization (WHO) is in the process of developing evidence-informed policy guidelines on the food environment, including school food and nutrition interventions and policies with a focus on five interventions and policies that influence the school food environment. These five include nutrition standards or rules, direct food provision, marketing restrictions, nudging interventions and pricing policies.
This review on contextual factors to be considered in the implementation of school food and nutrition policies was prepared as part of the required process for WHO guideline development. The factors considered in this review are values, resource implications, equity and human rights, feasibility and acceptability by stakeholder, as well as socio-cultural and environmental acceptability. A total of 350 publications were included in the review, the majority for acceptability (n = 116) and feasibility (n = 168).