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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Debora Pinkas, JD and Marice Ashe, JD, MPH. Public Health Law Program, Public Health Institute, 180 Grand Avenue; Suite 750, Oakland, CA 94612, (510 302-3353, dpinkas@phi.org

Nutrition advocates across the country are mobilizing to improve access to healthy foods on school campuses. Unfortunately, their efforts often are stymied by legal hurdles such as complex contract language that obscures plain meaning, lack of access to public records, and the difficulty in challenging the insidious efforts of soda and junk food industries to infiltrate the learning community with marketing and promotion messages.

The School Health Law Project has developed a series of legal tools for use by advocates to improve or eliminate school contracts for the sale of nonnutritious foods and beverages sold in competition with school lunch programs as well as food industry advertising. SHLP, a project of the California-based nonprofit Public Health Institute, works with state and local health departments, school districts, parents groups, and others to ensure that nutrition advocates are armed with legal tools and know-how to demand improvements in school food and beverage contracts.

Our focus is on how nutrition advocates can use the school contracting process to improve the nutritional value of foods and beverages being sold through the competitive food program. Specific topics will look at how public procurement and contracting works, how to obtain copies of existing contracts, how to read contracts (including definitions of key terms), how to identify industry tricks, how to negotiate a contract (and how to kill it if the terms are unacceptable), and how to watch-dog contract enforcement. Strategies about how to eliminate or improve junk food advertising on school campuses will also be presented.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand public contracting processes.
• Identify at least 3 strategies to improve school food and beverage contracts.
• Identify strategies used by the food and beverage industries to subvert the intent of healthy food contracts.
• Learn how to participate in school food and beverage contract negotiations.

Keywords: Nutrition, Law

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation