Imperial College London
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DrEszterVamos

Faculty of Medicine, School of Public Health

Clinical Senior Lecturer
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7457e.vamos

 
 
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Location

 

321Reynolds BuildingCharing Cross Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Parnham:2022:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02272-3,
author = {Parnham, JC and Vamos, EP and McKevitt, S and Laverty, AA},
doi = {10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02272-3},
journal = {Lancet},
title = {The UK's Free School Meals policy during the pandemic: a thematic content analysis of policy documents and debates.},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02272-3},
volume = {400 Suppl 1},
year = {2022}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - BACKGROUND: A Free School Meals (FSM) policy is a well recognised intervention for tackling food insecurity among children (up to the age 18 years) whose parents receive state benefits. National school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the need to rapidly adapt the delivery of FSM to protect the most disadvantaged children in the UK from increased food insecurity. A range of food assistance policies were implemented, but whether they were evidence-based is unclear. The aim of study was to establish the transparency of evidence use behind FSM policy decisions in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic and to identify other factors influencing decision making. METHODS: We used thematic content analysis to analyse publicly available policy documents and parliamentary debate transcripts relating to FSM published in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK (March, 2020, to March, 2021). This period covered the first national school closures (March, 2020, to July, 2020), all school holidays, and the second national school closures (January, 2021, to March, 2021). The evidence transparency framework was used to evaluate transparency of evidence-use in policy decisions. FINDINGS: We analysed 50 documents and debates. Overall transparency of evidence-use was low, but more evident for the Holiday Activities and Food programme than for the FSM programme. Replacing FSM with food parcels was favoured by the UK Government over more agentic modes of food assistance, such as cash vouchers. This preference seemingly aligned with politicians' ideological views on the welfare state, influenced by social media, as assessed from the analysis of available policy documents and parliamentary debate transcripts. Other influences on decision making included policy delivery and responding to increased public attention. INTERPRETATION: Evidence use behind the deployment of FSM was not transparent. Overall, value-based reasoning took precedent over evidence and was polarise
AU  - Parnham,JC
AU  - Vamos,EP
AU  - McKevitt,S
AU  - Laverty,AA
DO  - 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02272-3
PY  - 2022///
TI  - The UK's Free School Meals policy during the pandemic: a thematic content analysis of policy documents and debates.
T2  - Lancet
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)02272-3
UR  - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36448152
VL  - 400 Suppl 1
ER  -
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