Recipient Organization
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
CLEVELAND,OH 44106
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
We will establish much-needed, evidence-based food safety and operational practices to makeshare tables more feasible and attractive to the nearly 100,000 schools implementing theNational School Lunch Program, facilitating systems change to ameliorate child food insecurityand food waste. Share table implementation is currently limited because the existing guidance onshare table food safety requirements is fragmented and not specific enough to guide school-levelaction. Our overall goal is to address the food safety and operational concerns of stakeholdersthat are hindering share table food recovery. We will conduct qualitative interviews with healthinspectors to identify the perceived food safety risks that are informing local health codevariation. Next, we will conduct a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment of foodborne diseaserisk due to the consumption of share table food items to address stakeholder food safety concernsand identify best food-safety practices. Using these research findings, we will develop and pilotshare table training and implementation resources in 60 schools across the Midwestern UnitedStates. Finally, we will provide consistent, evidence-based share table resources across publichealth, school nutrition, and food pantry sectors through nationally disseminating our researchfindings and share table resources to key stakeholders while monitoring and evaluating their use.Our project outputs will provide a data-driven plan of action to all key stakeholders that willreduce food waste, increase healthy food donations to non-profits, and create cost savings forschool nutrition programs while protecting children's safety and promoting improved nutritionalsecurity.
Animal Health Component
25%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
25%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
Our overall goal is to address the food safety and operational concerns of stakeholders that are limiting share table food recovery.Obj 1. Conduct qualitative interviews with health inspectors to identify the perceived food safety risks that are informing restrictive share table policies: Research.Obj 2. Conduct a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) of foodborne disease risk due to the consumption of share table food items to address stakeholder food safety concerns and identify best food-safety practices: Research. Obj 3. Develop share table resources in collaboration with key stakeholders and use a train-the-trainer model to pilot them across approximately 60 schools in the FNS Midwest Region: Extension.Obj 4. Launch and evaluate a national dissemination of our research findings and share table resources to key stakeholders via social media marketing and online professional development dissemination: Extension.
Project Methods
Objective 1. Conduct qualitative interviews with health inspectors to identify the perceived food safety risks that are informing restrictive share table policies:1a. Share Table Advisory Committee Oversight. Commitee will guide all phases of the project.1b. Health Inspector Interview Data Collection. We will use a purposeful sampling technique. Consenting participants will participate in an audio-taped 60-minute interview.1c. Health Inspector Interview Data Analysis. Thematic analysis will be summarized and provided to participants via email to ensure that the results reflect the participants' point of view. Participants will be asked to respond with any suggestions to improve the results.Objective 2. Conduct a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) of foodborne disease risk due to the consumption of share table food items to address stakeholder food safety concerns and identify best food-safety practices: Research.2a. Hazard Identification. Using our team's experience with school nutrition programs we will determine the flow of foods through school meal programs tracking key points where food safety hazards could be introduced or modified by the process. Dr. Stasiewicz will then use his expert judgment to lead the team to identify the major biological, chemical, and physical hazards that could be introduced at each step and qualitatively assess their risk as major, intermediate, or minor, and consider those major risks as candidates for modeling in the QMRA.2b. Literature review. Each parameter in the model needs to be defined as close as possible to reality for the full model results to be applicable. Literature may provide mathematical models for the parameter which can be adopted directly - for example, Salmonella dose-response models.2c. QMRA. Broadly, we will first model the share table process in Excel and then use R software to iterate the model and track food safety risk outputs. We will then perform a sensitivity analysis to assess which input parameters have the largest impact on risk outputs by performing uncertainty iterations where we fix the value of a single input parameter at the [2.5th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 97.5th] percentile of the distribution. Next, we will track the change in, e.g., the predicted median illness; this analysis determines which input parameter ranges have the largest impact on the magnitude of the outputs.2d. Model comparison and what-if scenarios. We will compare different share table scenarios by making minor changes to the structure of the model rather than having to conduct additional real-world experiments.Objective 3. Develop share table resources in collaboration with key stakeholders and use a train-the-trainer model to pilot them across approximately 60 schools in the FNS Midwest Region:3a. Develop share table resources. Using the results from Objectives 1 and 2 and literature review findings, co-PDs Prescott, Stasiewicz, and Allison will develop share table standard operating procedures and corresponding HACCP templates, a training module, and tip sheets for working with local health inspectors and safe food donation to local food pantries. (Hereafter, these resources are referred to as the Share Table Toolkit)3b. Recruit schools and SNAP-Ed educators via mini-grants. In order to be eligible for the mini-grants, schools must partner with a SNAP-Ed educator in their county for implementation and technical assistance during the pilot. Eligible schools will also be required to have greater than 50% of their students receiving free or reduced-priced meals through the NSLP Once the pilot concludes, the school nutrition staff must be willing to facilitate the adoption of and implementation of share tables at other schools by providing their expertise and advice through selected communication modalities, as outlined in Objective 4.3c. Implement the train-the-trainer program. Corresponding SNAP-Ed educators for each pilot school will attend a training hosted by the University of Illinois. The training will cover food safety, relevant sections of the health code, guidance for working with local health departments, components of share table operation and food recovery, an overview of all Share Table Toolkit items, and the pilot evaluation.3d. Pilot Share Table Toolkit. The pilot will begin with baseline assessments. The SNAP-Ed educators will collect information that will be used for the cost-effectiveness analysis and an initial assessment of any food recovery activities already occurring at the school. Data collected for the cost-benefit analysis include: 1) current cost, order volume, and order frequency of share table eligible food items; 2) cost in terms of full-time equivalents of staff members involved in school meal service; and 3) cost of any other materials that may be expected to be used during share table intervention. The SNAP-Ed educator will conduct observations to assess share table use at each school at least once every two months. During all lunch periods, the SNAP-Ed educator will monitor how often the share table is used and tally how often items are put on and taken off the share table using visual assessment.3e. Evaluation and data analysis. The cost-effectiveness evaluation will be used to determine the total cost-effectiveness of the intervention. Descriptive statistics will be calculated for all other outcomes: number of participating schools, unclaimed share table items re-used in future meal service, donated unclaimed share table items, toolkit acceptability, and toolkit feasibility.Objective 4. Launch and evaluate a national dissemination of our research findings and share table resources to key stakeholders via social media marketing and online professional development dissemination via Extension.4a. Finalize Share Table Toolkit and obtain additional stakeholder feedback. We will revise the Share Table Toolkit based on the findings of the pilot study. We will present the toolkit to the Share Table Advisory Committee for stakeholder feedback. Stakeholders will also be asked to help disseminate the final toolkit.4b. Disseminate Share Table Toolkit. The Share Table Toolkit and corresponding online training modules will be housed on the ABCs of School Nutrition website and will be available for use worldwide at no cost. We will also submit the toolkit to be included in the national SNAP-Ed Toolkit. Finally, we will present the toolkit at state and national professional development conferences and trade newsletters.4c. Use social media to promote the toolkit and facilitate peer-to-peer technical assistance. We will push out success stories from the pilot study, host Twitter chats with school nutrition staff and SNAP-Ed staff who successfully implemented share tables in the pilot and coordinate requests for technical assistance.4d. Monitor and evaluate the use of the Share Table Toolkit. We will quantify the reach of the resources provided in the Share Table Toolkit using website traffic metrics and the frequency of toolkit downloads. We will evaluate the impact of the training module component of the toolkit on our target populations. Users completing the training module will complete a survey to establish baseline levels of share table implementation, evidence of knowledge and attitude change related to share table food safety practices, and intent to implement or improve implementation share tables in their cafeteria.4d. Disseminate research findings to health inspectors and public health departments nationwide. We will present the Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment findings in professional development conferences that are attended by health inspectors. We will also submit summaries of these findings to Food Safety News newsletters and on relevant practitioner electronic mailing lists, as well as eXtension.