Universal Free School Meals and Child Body Mass Index: Impact among children in community-based healthcare organizations

Introduction The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a federal policy that allows high poverty schools to provide universally free breakfast and lunch to all children. Providing universal free meals has potential to decrease childhood obesity, but so far studies are limited and findings mixed. Methods We used electronic health record data from a large network of community-based healthcare organizations and linked school-level data paired with extended two-way fixed effects models for staggered policy adoption to compare child body mass index z-scores (BMIz) from schools that adopted CEP to eligible, non-adopting schools. Results The sample consisted of 149,052 distinct lower-income children who attended a balanced panel of 1,085 schools in 12 states. Mean age was 10.8 years, with 84% being publicly insured, and plurality race/ethnicity being Hispanic (43.1%). Children in CEP schools gained less in BMIz compared to children in eligible, non-adopting schools (difference-in-difference: -0.02 (95% CI: -0.04, -0.004)); estimates becoming more negative over time. However, we also find some evidence of heterogeneity by the year of adoption with increases in BMIz in some specifications. Conclusions This study builds on the evidence suggesting that, for some low-income populations, universal free school meals are associated with relative decreases in BMI.