The places we live, work, study and play are important locations for governments to improve population health by curbing unhealthy diets that cause preventable diseases and deaths. Think cafes in public hospitals, eateries in public-sector workplaces, canteens in public schools and food outlets in community sports centres.
Both Australia and New Zealand have healthy food retail policies that guide food retailers on strategies and practices to make it easier for their customers to purchase and consume healthier foods and drinks.
‘A good example is Victoria’s healthy food retail policy for public healthcare facilities, which mandates that a cafe or food outlet within the hospital offer at least 50% of foods classified as the healthiest and no more than 20% of the least healthy foods,’ said PhD scholar Bettina Backman from Deakin Institute for Health Transformation’s Deakin Centre for Global Preventive Health and Nutrition.
‘But for governments to see meaningful impacts on population health, changes to food environments need to be sustained over time and at scale. While these policies exist, healthy food retail practices are not always implemented, and what sustains the policy and practices over time is even less well understood,’ Backman explained.
Identifying 33 policies, 30 from Australia and three from New Zealand, with most targeting healthy food retail in schools and healthcare settings, Backman analysed the policies to understand how sustainment was addressed. Together with her colleagues and co-authors from Monash University and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Backman recently published her PhD findings in Social Science & Medicine.
‘I looked at what the policies say is needed to help sustain changes over time and the actions they propose to support sustainment. Interestingly, many of these policies, for healthy food retailing in public settings, didn’t clearly define what retailers were expected to do, even though the retailer—say, the cafe owner in a hospital—is usually the one putting the changes into practice,’ said Backman.
The analysis found that the policies considered public institutions, such as hospitals and schools, responsible for the ongoing provision of healthy food, but didn’t account for differences in an institution’s available resources or support capacity. Backman said, ‘Under-resourced public institutions, particularly those in lower socio-economic areas, may lack the capacity to comply with the policy, which could lead to inequities in healthy food access.’
The research highlights a need for more consistent, harmonised national-level healthy food retail policies to streamline implementation and sustainment support from state governments, and to reduce the complexity of policy implementation and compliance for national food retailers.
‘To further advance this work, I’ve surveyed over 200 Australian retailers and 100 health practitioners (e.g., dietitians) involved in implementing these policies in public settings. Their insights will help us better understand how governments can support them to sustain healthy food retail practices over time and achieve greater return on their investment’, said Backman.
Read the paper titled: Sustaining healthy food retail: do Australian and New Zealand government policies consider long-term change?
Read the latest paper titled: ‘We all need to be on the same page’: sustainment of healthy food retail practices in Australian public settings
Read more about Bettina Backman’s research
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