In the 10 years since the federal government , studies have suggested the policy has wide-ranging benefits. Students in participating schools , are and .

Now, as cuts to food assistance programs threaten to slash access to universal school meals, a new study led by the 天美影视传媒 finds another potential benefit to the programs: Students in participating schools were less likely to have high blood pressure, suggesting that universal free meals might be a powerful tool for improving public health.聽

鈥淗igh blood pressure is an important public health problem that isn鈥檛 studied as much on a population level as obesity,鈥� said , a UW postdoctoral researcher of health systems and population health and lead author of the study. 鈥淲e have evidence that CEP increases participation in school meals, and we also have evidence that school meals are more nutritious than meals that kids obtain elsewhere. This is a public health policy that is delivering nutritious meals to children who may not have previously had access.鈥�

For the study, , researchers linked two datasets that rarely interact. They obtained medical records of patients ages 4-18 from community health organizations, and used patients鈥� addresses to identify the school they attended. The data encompassed 155,778 young people attending 1,052 schools, mostly in California and Oregon.

Researchers estimated the percentage of students with high blood pressure before and after schools opted into universal free meals, and compared those results against eligible schools that had not yet participated in the program. They also tracked students鈥� average systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings. All data were aggregated at the school level.聽

They found that school participation in the CEP was associated with a 2.71% decrease in the proportion of students with high blood pressure, corresponding to a 10.8% net drop over five years. School participation in CEP was also associated with a decrease in students鈥� average diastolic blood pressure.聽

鈥淚n previous work on the health impacts of universal free school meals, our team found that adoption of free meals is associated with decreases in and , which are closely linked to risk of high blood pressure,鈥� said , a professor of health, society and behavior at the University of California Irvine鈥檚 Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health and senior author of the study. Jones-Smith conducted much of this research while on faculty at the UW School of Public Health. 鈥淪o in addition to directly affecting blood pressure through provision of healthier meals, a second pathway by which providing universal free meals might impact blood pressure is through their impact on lowering risk for high BMI.鈥澛�

Improved nutrition of school meals may have helped drive the decrease, researchers said. The 2010 law that established the CEP also created stronger nutritional requirements for school meals. As a result, those meals now more closely resemble the , which to be an effective tool for managing hypertension.聽

Despite the evidence supporting the DASH diet鈥檚 effectiveness, public health officials previously lacked an effective mechanism to encourage people with high blood pressure to follow its recommendations. 鈥淲e know there are a lot of barriers to people eating this diet,鈥� Localio said, but the combination of universal free meals and increased nutritional standards likely helped students overcome those barriers.

The study also contradicts the common misperception that universal free meals mostly benefit wealthier students, because students from low-income families would already receive free meals. The study sample consists primarily of low-income patients, with 85% of included students enrolled in public health insurance such as Medicaid.

鈥淭here is a perception that providing universally free school meals will only improve outcomes for students of relatively higher-income families, but our findings suggest that there are benefits for lower-income children as well,鈥� Jones-Smith said. 鈥淧otential mechanisms for this include decreasing the income-related stigma around eating school lunch by providing it free to all students and eliminating the time and paperwork burden of individually applying, thus decreasing barriers to participation in school meals.鈥�

These findings come at an uncertain time for universal free meals. A school is eligible to participate in the CEP if . In this way, recent cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation鈥檚 largest food assistance program, may affect schools鈥� access to the program.

鈥淲e鈥檙e in a contentious time for public health, but it seems like there鈥檚 bipartisan support for healthy school meals,鈥� Localio said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 legislation being considered in a number of states to expand universal free meals, and these findings could inform that decision-making. Cutting funding to school meals would not promote children鈥檚 health.鈥澛�

Co-authors on the study include , research professor emeritus of health systems and population health at the UW; , teaching professor of economics at the UW; Wyatt Benksen and Aileen Ochoa of OCHIN; and , associate professor of nursing at the UW. This study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.聽

For more information or to contact the researchers, email Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.

Social media. The climate crisis. Political polarization. The tumult of a pandemic and online learning. Teens today are dealing with unprecedented stressors, and over the past decade their mental health has been in sustained decline. Levels of anxiety and depression . Compounding the problem is a shortage of mental health providers 鈥� for every 100,000 children in the U.S., there are .

In response to this crisis, 天美影视传媒 researchers studied whether virtual reality might help reduce stress for teens and boost mental health. Working with adolescents, the team designed a snowy virtual world with six activities 鈥� such as stacking rocks and painting 鈥� based on practices shown to improve mental health.

In a 3-week study of 44 Seattle teens, researchers found that teens used the technology an average of twice a week without being prompted and reported lower stress levels and improved mood while using it, though their levels of anxiety and depression didn鈥檛 decline overall.

The researchers published April 22 in the journal JMIR XR and Spatial Computing. The system is not publicly available.

鈥淲e know what works to help support teens, but a lot of these techniques are inaccessible because they鈥檙e locked into counseling, which can be expensive, or the counselors just aren鈥檛 available,鈥� said lead author , a UW senior research scientist in the human centered design and engineering department. 鈥淪o we tried to take some of these evidence-based practices, but put them in a much more engaging environment, like VR, so the teens might want to do them on their own.鈥�

The world of Relaxation Environment for Stress in Teens, or RESeT, came from conversations the researchers had with groups of teens over two years at Seattle Public Library sites. From these discussions, the team built RESeT as an open winter world with a forest that users could explore by swinging their arms (a behavior ) to move their avatar. A signpost with six arrows on it sent users to different activities, each based on methods shown to improve mental health, such as dialectical behavior therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction.

In one exercise, 鈥淩iverboat,鈥� users put negative words in paper boats and send them down a river. Another, 鈥淩abbit Hole,鈥� has players stand by a stump; the longer they鈥檙e still, the more rabbits appear.

鈥淚n the co-design process, we learned some teens were really afraid of squirrels, which I wouldn鈥檛 have thought of,鈥� Bj枚rling said. 鈥淪o we removed all the squirrels. I still have a Post-It in my office that says 鈥榙elete squirrels.鈥� But all ages and genders loved rabbits, so we designed Rabbit Hole, where the reward for being calm and paying attention is a lot of rabbits surrounding you.鈥�

To test the potential effects of RESeT on teens鈥� mental health, the team enrolled 44 teens between ages 14 and 18 in the study. Each teen was given a Meta Quest 2 headset and asked to use RESeT three to five times a week Because the researchers were trying to see if teens would use RESeT regularly on their own, they did not give prompts or incentives to use the headsets after the start of the study. Teens were asked to complete surveys gauging their stress and mood before and after each session.

On average, the teens used RESeT twice a week for 11.5 minutes at a time. Overall, they reported feeling significantly less stressed while using RESeT, and also reported smaller improvements in mood. They said they liked using the headset in general. However, the study found no significant effects on anxiety and depression.

鈥淩educed stress and improved mood are our key findings and exactly what we hoped for,鈥� said co-author , an associate professor in the UW School of Nursing who works with children and families. 鈥淲e didn’t have a big enough participant group or a design to study long-term health impacts, but we have promising signals that teens liked using RESeT and could administer it themselves, so we absolutely want to move the project forward.鈥�

The researchers aim to conduct a larger, longer-term study with a control group to see if a VR system could impart lasting effects on mood and stress. They鈥檙e also interested in incorporating artificial intelligence to personalize the VR experience and in exploring offering VR headsets in schools or libraries to improve community access.

Additional co-authors were , a UW lecturer and researcher at Microsoft; , a senior manager at Electronic Arts who completed this research as a UW master鈥檚 student in human centered design and engineering; , a research professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the UW School of Medicine; and , a senior product designer at Statsig who completed this research as a UW master鈥檚 student in human centered design and engineering. This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health through the , which supports UW research on mental health.

For more information, contact Bj枚rling at bjorling@uw.edu and Sonney at jsonney@uw.edu.

Kate Simonen, Vikram Prakash honored by Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture

and , faculty members in the Department of Architecture, have both received 2020 Architectural Education Awards from the .

The honor architectural educators across a dozen categories for “exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship and service.”

Prakash, professor of architecture, received a Distinguished Professor Award, recognizing “a positive, stimulating and nurturing” influence on students, inspiring them to contribute to the advancement of architecture.

Simonen, associate professor of architecture, received the TAD Research Contribution Award, for the best article 鈥� “Benchmarking the Embodied Carbon of Buildings” 鈥� from the association’s Simonen’s co-authors are graduate research assistant and Swiss researcher . Simonen is founding director of the UW-based . Learn more on the College of Built Environments .

Top newsmaker: Simonen also was named one of the by Engineering News Record. “It has been a banner year for Kate Simonen and her burgeoning band of embodied carbon busters bent on reducing the negative environmental impacts of building production,” the editors write. The top newsmakers will be celebrated April 2 at an event in New York.

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Seattle Times names Valerie Curtis-Newton among most influential people of the decade

The Seattle Times has named , UW professor of drama, as one of “.”

A professor of directing and acting, Curtis-Newton is head of directing for the School of Drama, and also heads the , dedicated to exploring African American life, history and culture.

Calling Curtis-Newton “a titan in the Seattle cultural scene,” the Times writes: “She got there not by being flashy (though she’s certainly capable of inspiring a crowd) but by doing the hard work in the trenches, with the community and inside arts organizations large and small, doggedly insisting on two things: artistic excellence and increasingly incorporating a Black lens into the collective view of what theater is and can be.”

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Alison Gray, professor of oceanography, receives first Microsoft Investigator Fellowship

, UW assistant professor of oceanography, has been named recipient of an inaugural . The awards are given to empower researchers of all disciplines who plan to make an impact with research and teaching using the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Each fellowship provides $100,000 a year for two years and various training and community events.

Gray studies the circulation of the ocean and its impact on the physics and chemistry of the climate system. Her research seeks to improve understanding of the interactions between ocean circulation and global biogeochemical cycles.

Microsoft chose 15 fellowships among over 290 proposals received. Learn more on the College of the Environment or the original Microsoft .

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Donna Berry, Jennifer Sonney chosen for School of Nursing faculty endowed fellowships

School of Nursing faculty members and have been chosen the inaugural recipients of two endowed faculty fellowship awards.

Berry will receive the Health Informatics Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Nursing, established by Marjorie V. Batey. Berry will work to implement evidence-based practices in acute care and ambulatory settings by integrating health informatics technologies into clinical processes.

Sonney, an assistant professor of nursing, will receive the Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Symptom Science, which is supported by two endowments; one was established by Batey in the name of Elizabeth C. Giblin; the other is in the names of Lucia S. and Herbert L. Pruzan. Sonney will work to improve the health of children with asthma by reducing symptoms and establishing lifelong self-management skills.

Learn more from an .

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Four UW bioengineers receive Society for Biomaterials 2020 awards

, and will receive the 2020 Technology Innovation and Development Award from the which promotes advances in biomaterials sciences research and development. will receive the society’s 2020 Young Investigators Award. The were announced Jan. 6.

The Technology Innovation and Development Award recognizes an individual or team’s successful application of basic and applied biomaterials research in development of a new medical product or technology that significantly benefits medical or surgical patients.

The three faculty members were honored for leadership of the UW-based , which was started by Ratner and is co-directed by Castner and Gamble.

Gamble is a research associate professor of bioengineering, Castner a professor emeritus of chemical engineering and of bioengineering, and Ratner a professor of bioengineering and chemical engineering.

The Young Investigators Award recognizes an individual demonstrating outstanding achievements in biomaterials research. DeForest is assistant professor of chemical engineering and of bioengineering.

All four are of the .