Understanding Low School Breakfast Participation in the Heartland: Are Midwest values competing with school breakfast participation?

Introduction: School breakfast (SB) is an important strategy for addressing food insecurity and obesity in rural, low income communities; however, the rural state of Iowa ranks 47^th in the nation for SB participation.

Methods: To explore why participation is so low, a state-wide online survey of parents (n = 8933) was conducted. The survey focused on perceptions of the program including barriers and benefits.

Results: Almost 20% of parents reported that their child never ate breakfast. Most parents were aware of SB, but only 8.3% of parents reported that their child ate SB every day. The most common reason for why a child eats breakfast at school was limited time at home, but 18% of parents reported their child does not eat SB because they view breakfast as a parental responsibility. While 21.8% of parents said there were no benefits to eating SB, 40% of parents perceived convenience as the biggest benefit to SB; they believed it was time saving (20.8%), and reduced stress in the morning (20.9%). Parents also perceived SB was for families with not enough money (44%) or time (43%) for breakfast at home. Almost 30% believed SB was for families that do not care enough to provide them with breakfast. Many parents perceived SB as healthy (45.6%).  Parents also provided ideas about how to improve SB and increase participation.

Discussion: The findings indicate parents have misperceptions about SB. The findings were shared across the state and will be used to develop interventions to encourage SB participation.