TAMPA, FL — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is making $32.5 million available to schools and districts to test ways to reduce highly processed foods, improve meal quality and determine which nutrition strategies can be scaled without increasing recurring operating costs.
The initiative, called Developing Evidence for Programs to Ensure Nutrition for Development, or DEPEND, will be administered by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health.
Schools, districts and School Food Authorities will be eligible to compete for awards ranging from $75,000 to $2.5 million, depending on the scope of their proposals. HHS expects to make the first awards in October.
The department said the application cycle will open soon. If the program produces useful results, HHS intends to seek additional funding in fiscal 2027.
DEPEND will focus on four areas: food purchasing and supply, workforce and food production, student demand and meal economics, and school operations and infrastructure.
The structure is designed around pilot projects rather than a single nationwide model. HHS said it wants participating schools to test approaches that can be sustained using their existing recurring resources once the one-time federal funding ends.
“DEPEND will give schools the tools to replace highly processed foods with real, nutrient-dense food — and use rigorous science to prove what works,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said.
The program responds to operational barriers schools face when changing meal programs, including procurement costs, staffing, kitchen capacity, supply constraints and student participation.
HHS also said evidence remains limited on which school nutrition interventions are effective across different types of districts and financially sustainable over time.
A coordinating center will oversee participating sites and standardize how results are collected and evaluated. The initiative will also work with the NIH All of Us Research Program to make findings available to schools and the public.
The department said the resulting data are intended to help districts distinguish between approaches that improve nutrition and those that are too costly, difficult to operate or ineffective at increasing student participation.
Schools and districts can find additional information through HHS’s newly launched Real Food in Schools website.
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