Megan Ferguson and Julie Brimblecombe
23 February 2021
The Healthy Stores 2020 Policy Action series has been developed to support retailers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to inform their own store nutrition policies and adopt healthier retail strategies.
The Policy Actions were co-designed using evidence from research, and store owners and retailers. The actions were informed by research evidence. A range of strategies to maximise their acceptability and feasibility in remote community stores, was informed by evidence from store owners and retailers. This evidence was created at a workshop with 30 Northern Territory and North Queensland Aboriginal store owners and retailers from independent stores and store organisations, health and government personnel and researchers in late 2019.
The Policy Action series therefore outlines the best international evidence along with industry-informed strategies to increase the acceptability and feasibility of these actions in remote community stores. The series includes best practice for: i) Product, Placement & Promotion of Healthy Foods & Drinks, ii) Product, Placement & Promotion of Unhealthy Foods & Drinks, and iii) Price & Price Promotion on Foods & Drinks.
The series is aimed to be used by store owners and retailers, and those who support them, in developing and revising their store nutrition policy. The policy actions together with strategies designed to mitigate challenges that may present when implementing the actions offer the best chance of success in improving the healthiness of the remote food retail environment. The Healthy Stores 2020 Policy Action series therefore offers a package for health-enabling stores that can be implemented by individual stores or via programs such as the Healthy Remote Stores program currently being planned by Health and Wellbeing Queensland Remote Stores program and a proposed benchmarking model to provide feedback on implementation of best practice policy in stores across remote Australia.
