Italian public school: a pilot study about disorders related to nutrition and their management.

Objective: To know how Italian nursery and primary schools survey and manage children with food-related problems.

Design: A pilot study during the period March-May 2005, filling out a questionnaire.

Setting: All nursery and primary schools in a Northern Italian region (Friuli Venezia Giulia).

Subjects: There were 479 eligible schools

Results: Global response rate was of 29.6%. In 77.5% (110/142) of the schools there were children with food-related pathologies. Programs about nutrition were carried out by 44.4% (63/142) of the schools in the previous two years; 9.5% (6/63) dealt with food-related pathologies and 57.1% (36/63) required the intervention of outside experts to have these projects realized. In the same period training courses about nutrition for teachers were conducted in 9.2% (13/142) of the schools.

Conclusions: Data provide a first overview of the situation in Italy on food-related topics in children attending nursery and primary schools. Therefore many programs could not rely on funds to be developed, but had to use internal resources of the school.