Debebe, Zelalem (Professor)Goshime, Girma2020-08-312023-11-092020-08-312023-11-092020-06-11http://10.90.10.223:4000/handle/123456789/22201Introduction: Middle and low-income countries host about 90% of the world’s children and adolescents, approximately 1.8 billion which make up about 27% of the population of those countries. However, little is known about the prevalence and consequences of malnutrition among these groups of population as compared to that of young children specially in Africa. Fortunately, SFP has been gaining much popularity across the world in addressing the nutrition problems of these schoolchildren. Ethiopia endorsed National School Health & Nutrition strategy (SHN) in October 2012. The present study attempted to evaluate the implementation of school feeding program and nutrition status of school fed children in selected government primary schools in Addis Ababa. Objective: To evaluate the extent of implementation of SFP in selected primary schools as per the national SHN strategy and assess the nutrition status of the beneficiary students. Methods: A descriptive-cross sectional-mixed method study. The evaluation of the SFP was done using content analysis, for which 19 purposively selected participants were interviewed, three-year documents were reviewed retrospectively and field observation were carried out and were triangulated. The assessment of the nutrition status of the school fed children was done by taking anthropometric measurements from 622 school fed children and their nutrition status was determined using WHO growth indices and z-scores standard deviations. Findings: The findings on the evaluation of the SFP revealed that there was knowledge gap about the national SHN strategy among SFP coordinators at different levels. The SFP particularly, the school meal service was found to be relevant in alleviating school hunger. However, the foods were found to be static & monotonous. There were school meal service discrepancies between schools. Nevertheless, the school meal service has high acceptance by users with percentages of users, dropouts & non-users of the service being 92%, 6.76% &1.66% respectively. SFP were not being implemented comprehensively and the overall accomplishments was found to be low 42.9%, with some services like disease prevention & control and MNS was not implemented at all. The SFP has faced many challenges & problems like: - poor and dispiriting working infrastructures, weak inter-sectoral collaboration, lack of human & material resources, lack of clear ownership, and lack of transparent & accountable management system. The overall prevalence of malnutrition (underweight, stunting& overweight) among study participants age 7 to14 year-old (n=621) was found to be 23.5% ,29.2% & 0.3% respectively. Conclusion: The implementation of SFP lacked comprehensiveness and much emphasis was given only to school meal services. There was sub-standard monitoring & evaluation of the SFP for instance, the beneficiary students were not screened for malnutrition, which is one of the monitoring indicators stated in the school health program Framework. These findings put the SFP questionable in addressing the national SHN strategic objectives. However, with all its limitations, the SFP is a very important and practical way for solving food and nutrition insecurity of the schoolchildren economically, and it should be continued, supported, encouraged & strengthen through community participation & ownership and stakeholders enhanced involvement. Recommendation: Schools & other stakeholders acting on SFP should follow the national SHN strategy & the Ethiopia school health program framework as stated in the recommendation section of this study.enSchool Health & Nutrition StrategySchool Fed ChildrenSchool Feeding ProgramThesis