4th Annual Research Statement to the Members of the School Meals Coalition

The Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition was launched in 2021 as a global initiative to provide independent, evidence-based guidance to the 109 member states of the School Meals Coalition as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild the health, education and future of their schoolchildren and adolescents. Guided by a 10-year independent research strategy, the Research Consortium aims to consolidate and distil research findings to guide actionable approaches that policy makers can apply in their own national contexts. Since its founding in 2021, more than 1,200 academics, practitioners, and policy advisors from 600 organizations across 120 countries have organically formed a Global Academy, organized around six thematic Communities of Practice. Broad support from donors enables the Research Consortium Secretariat to undertake country-based and country-led research together with members of the Global Academy. In addition, the Research Consortium also partners with established knowledge hubs—such as National Centres of Excellence and regional bodies—to expand peer-to-peer learning and share findings more widely. This is the Research Consortium’s Fourth Annual Research Statement.1 As in previous years, the 2025 Annual Research Statement reports new programmatic and policy insights, as well as building on the evolving evidence since the Coalition’s Ministerial Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in 2024. The Statement expands on this evidence base by exploring the implications for policy, with the aim of contributing to the reach, quality, and comprehensiveness of national school meals programmes towards 2030. The Statement was prepared by the Research Consortium as an input to the School Meals Coalition for the parliamentarians and policymakers of the member countries of the Coalition. The insights consolidated within this Statement draw from analyses led by the Research Consortium’s Global Academy, as indicated under each statement below.