Experience in Promoting Parental Control of School Meals in the Tula Region

Abstract

Introduction: The main tool for a systematic assessment of nutrition includes monitoring activities allowing for overall improvement of school meals in addition to identification and elimination of violations of the Russian sanitary and epidemiological legislation and a follow-up of children’s collectives. Objective: To evaluate the experience of cooperation with schoolchildren’s parents in issues of school feeding in the Tula Region. Methods: The sanitary and descriptive method was used in the assessment of results of inspections, organizational and methodological work on control over school nutrition, interaction with parents, and outcomes of parental control. Results: The article reviews the experience of cooperation of the public health inspectorate with the parent community to improve school feeding in the Tula Region. Considering a paramount importance of the quality of hot school meals and the expected effectiveness of its parental control, experts of the Regional Office of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) have taken a number of effective outreach measures on healthy nutrition, development of essential practical and theoretical skills and abilities of a healthy lifestyle, proper algorithms in reacting to arising problems in school catering, and coordination of interactions between parent communities. Conclusion: The implementation of measures that ensure effective cooperation between the supervisory body and the parent community has made a significant contribution to improving the quality of hot school meals in the region.