Accountability mechanisms

RE-FRESH: Next Generation approaches the challenge of creating healthier retail food environments using three different mechanisms to drive change.

About Stream 2 – Accountability mechanisms:

Governments and the food industry have indicated that our accountability and benchmarking initiatives help them to increase their understanding of best practice, to highlight public health priorities relevant to them, and to help generate internal advocacy for action. The full potential of these initiatives to drive increased accountability and action will only be realised if they are sustained over time with ongoing, embedded processes for knowledge exchange.

Moreover, as retail food environments evolve to become increasingly digital (online) and the importance of environmental sustainability in corporate responsibility grows, new monitoring and benchmarking methods will be needed to align with these new priorities.

To greater incentivise retailers to adopt and maintain practices that support healthy diets, this stream will:

1. Develop methods for monitoring and benchmarking of online food environments;
2. Develop new monitoring tools to evaluate different retail settings, including complex food environments such as ‘high streets’ and food courts, and incorporate environmental sustainability into our monitoring methods;
3. Create and test recognition and accreditation schemes tailored for different retail settings; and
4. Explore processes to increase the sustainability and efficiency of accountability strategies.