Today’s population health challenges are complex. Addressing these challenges and building environments that value and promote health for everyone requires expertise from multiple scientific disciplines and public and private partners.
Guided by the principles of scientific rigor, equity, justice, community engagement, and multidisciplinary and multi-institution collaboration, the Lerner Center’s mission is to improve population and community health through research, education, outreach and health promotion programming focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health and health disparities.
With faculty affiliates from public health, sociology, psychology, economics, medicine and public administration, the Lerner Center’s approach to research is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.
Established in 2011 with an endowment from Sid and Helaine Lerner, the center fulfills its mission through the interrelated pillars of research, education, advocacy and action.
Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health
Population Health Research Brief Series
Exposure to Free School Meals in Kindergarten Has Lasting Positive Effects on Students’ Attendance
Samantha Trajkovski, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Michah W. Rothbart
February 2023
Abstract
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is the country's second largest food assistance program, serving free or reduced-price meals to 30 million students daily. A growing number of schools and districts offer Universal Free Meals (UFM), which provides free meals to all students regardless of income. This brief summarizes findings examining the relationship between exposure to UFM in kindergarten and attendance and weight outcomes in NYC students from grades K-3. The results demonstrate that children who receive free meals through UFM in kindergarten have better school attendance than those who do not. In addition, there is no evidence that receipt of free meals in kindergarten affects weight outcomes.
Population Health Brief Series
Research Projects
Research by Lerner affiliates is regularly funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and many other federal agencies and foundations. The Lerner Center also funds population health research at Syracuse University through its Faculty Fellows Program.
Student Opportunities
Are you an undergraduate or graduate student at Syracuse University interested in population and community health? Do you seek a career with meaning and purpose?
The Lerner Center provides distinctive experience that combines traditional and applied training in population health and community health research and engagement to address pressing local, regional and national health problems and reduce health inequities—from academic certificates, to internships, to service learning opportunities and more.
Healthy Monday
Learn tips and tricks to jump start your Monday, maintain or promote healthy behaviors and help to end preventable chronic diseases.
Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health
Population Health Research Brief Series
Exposure to Free School Meals in Kindergarten Has Lasting Positive Effects on Students’ Attendance
Samantha Trajkovski, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Michah W. Rothbart
February 2023
Abstract
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is the country's second largest food assistance program, serving free or reduced-price meals to 30 million students daily. A growing number of schools and districts offer Universal Free Meals (UFM), which provides free meals to all students regardless of income. This brief summarizes findings examining the relationship between exposure to UFM in kindergarten and attendance and weight outcomes in NYC students from grades K-3. The results demonstrate that children who receive free meals through UFM in kindergarten have better school attendance than those who do not. In addition, there is no evidence that receipt of free meals in kindergarten affects weight outcomes.