The Australian federal government has taken steps to improve access to healthy food in remote communities by reducing the cost of 30 essential everyday items to be in line with their urban counterparts.
This follows consultation into the cost and availability of these everyday items, many of which are essential components of healthy diets, and the factors that often make these unavailable and unaffordable.
‘The program is significantly reducing prices in stores but also boosting health outcomes and ensuring remote communities aren’t left behind when it comes to food and essentials. We see it making a real, tangible difference to customers’ ability to feed their families’Alastair King, Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation CEO
Remote community retailers can now join the new scheme which will be delivered by Outback Stores, once they have signed up to a National Code of Practice for Remote Store Operations. This code of practice covers the three key pillars of governance, operations and health, and intends to ensure that remote communities have genuine decision-making authority to determine the ownership, governance and management practices of stores in their community. The health standards focus on ways to encourage healthier purchases, including restrictions on the promotion, discounting and display of unhealthy food and drinks in high traffic areas of the stores and the availability and promotion of fresh fruit and vegetables and healthy takeaway meals.
The new health standards build on a successful study where a retail strategy was co-designed with remote community members, including store managers and the board of a First Nations corporation responsible for a large number of remote community stores. The Healthy Stores 2020 study published in the Lancet Planetary Health showed that the introduction of the retail strategy resulted in an overall reduction in the amount of sugar sold, without affecting store profit. Retailers involved in that study permanently adopted the strategy, but the new healthy food subsidies will now also ensure more affordable prices of a range of food and essential grocery items.
For retailers and policy makers wanting to introduce a health promoting store policy, a series of policy options were co-designed with store owners and retailers, and health department and government personnel.
‘These remote store initiatives are informed by the locally developed evidence for healthy in-store environments and demonstrate the long-term advocacy of community leaders and others for policy action to support healthy communities’Associate Professor Megan Ferguson, The University of Queensland
The Australian government has funded the Healthy Stores Project implemented by Monash University, which draws from a benchmarking approach that has been co-designed with stores. This project will support stores with implementation of the Code. The government has also announced funding to build a Nutrition Workforce, which will be led by the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation and will upskill a local First Nations staff to provide on the ground support in communities. Supporting and upskilling staff, ensuring the ongoing supply of competitively priced essential grocery items, and shifting retail food environments to promote healthier purchasing, is one step towards improved food security in remote communities and access to a greater range of healthier choices within community stores.
