Health chiefs and parliamentarians join together to call for action on children’s food
Children have a right to – and benefit from – healthy, happy childhoods. Key to this is access to healthy, nutritious food and the current situation faced by hundreds of thousands of children cannot be allowed to continue.
Greg Fell, ADPH President
Today, we have joined with a coalition of health organisations and charities to publish a major new report “The Health of the Next Generation – Good Food For Children” which calls on the Government to protect the health and productivity of our next generation by expanding access to nutritious food for children through the Free School Meal Programme, National School Breakfast Programme, and the Healthy Start Voucher scheme.
Most important of the report’s recommendations is a call for the Government to adopt universal school meal provision for all primary and secondary school children in England.
The report follows a letter sent to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in February of last year which we signed alongside over 30 MPs and 20 members of the House of Lords, calling for urgent action to tackle food poverty and help support a healthy population and productive economy.
Greg Fell, ADPH President, said:
“Children have a right to – and benefit from – healthy, happy childhoods. Key to this is access to healthy, nutritious food and the current situation faced by hundreds of thousands of children cannot be allowed to continue.
“Not only will access to good food ensure that individual children are able to thrive, but our communities will also become healthier, enabling whole populations to thrive.
“We have to break the cycle to prevent more children and families going through what so many are currently experiencing, and our recommendations today give clear steps to ensuring that future generations can live happy, healthy – and productive – lives.”
The report was authored by a coalition of the following professional health organisations and charities:
- Faculty of Public Health
- Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
- School and Public Health School Nurses Association
- Association of Directors of Public Health
- Royal Society of Medicine
- British Association for Child and Adolescent Public Health
- Royal Society for Public Health
You can read a summary of the report here, and a full copy of the report here.