New Zealand’s hospital food retail outlets will soon step up from voluntary food and drink guidelines to a mandated policy, thanks to research from RE-FRESH: Next Generation members.
Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu and Dr Magda Rosin, from the University of Auckland, were part of a team that generated evidence showing the need for both a national mandated policy and tools to support its implementation.
They led the first comprehensive national evaluation of the voluntary policy introduced in 2016 (revised 2019) which revealed that only eight of 20 health districts in the country had taken up the policy, designed to ensure healthy options are available and promoted in hospital staff cafeterias, cafes and coffee shops, and vending machines .
“Not only was the policy not being widely implemented, the level of achievement of the policy criteria varied greatly across the regions,” Dr Rosin said.
“From interviewing the food providers and the public health dieticians in the hospitals we were able to gain their perspectives and it also shone a light on the need for implementation support.”
The research findings were taken to New Zealand’s National Food and Drink Environment Network which advocated to government for the policy to be mandated.
Dr Rosin has been part of the working group charged with subsequently reviewing the policy and ensuring it is updated and easier for food providers to understand and implement.
An app developed by Dr Rosin as part of her PhD, called the Healthy Kai (Food) Checker, has also received funding from Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand). The tool has been designed specifically for the NZ food environment context, with the funding-enabling update of the product database contained within the Healthy Kai Checker. It will be available to use for free as part of the implementation toolkit after the mandate comes into effect.
Dr Rosin said it was “rare” for research to inform policy change so quickly and especially exciting that the research had been part of her PhD.
“Things usually don’t progress this fast – it’s amazing to see our research inform a policy mandate.
“I look at hospitals as workplaces and we have a large number of people working there. We want our healthcare staff to be healthy and able to provide healthcare to others when they need it. If we can do this by providing better food, I think that’s really significant.
“I hope this policy opens an avenue for more (food and drink) policies to be mandated in New Zealand; especially to ensure that children have better access to healthy food to help them grow. We want to give them healthier choices and to make it as easy as possible to do so.”
Prof Ni Mhurchu, whose involvement harks back to helping develop the first national voluntary guidelines, described the mandate as a major step forward in improving the healthiness of the country’s food retail environments.
‘“It is a wonderful example of the value of research co-designed and conducted in collaboration with end users and policy makers who are in a position to implement its findings.” ’Prof. Cliona Ni Mhurchu, The University of Auckland
