The aim of stream 1 is to identify the most feasible healthy food retail interventions relevant to supermarkets, remote stores, and food service settings.
There are more than ten projects currently being undertaken, with additional work planned. As a team, we are constantly seeking new opportunities for funding and collaboration to grow this body of work.
Objective 1
Develop and test innovative methods for co-development and implementation of interventions to create healthier food environments.
Objective 2
Determine the central factors that influence intervention adoption and implementation.
Objective 3
Develop tools and resources for use in initiative co-development and implementation.
Objective 1: Develop and test innovative methods for co-development and implementation of interventions to create healthier food environments across different retail settings.
To achieve this we have drawn on researchers’ previous work and developed a cyclical, staged approach, based on a continuous quality improvement process, combining four innovative technologies into one streamlined process: CO-creation and evaluation of food environments to Advance Community Health (COACH). This will be tested as part of meeting our second objective.
Objective 2: Determine the central factors that influence initiative adoption and implementation. To satisfy this objective we will explore the gaps that exists in the translation of evidence to practice in different settings and contexts. Projects include:
- Reviews of co-design of food retail interventions, and the evidence on programs to improve the availability and promotion of healthy food in rural communities.
- Investigations of dietary patterns in rural and regional Australia, in combination with food environment initiatives that involve health services, of relationship between food supply and purchasing patterns in a rural Victorian community, and of quality implementation practices that will lead to enhanced sustainment of community-led obesity prevention efforts.
- Exploration of the factors that lead to successful implementation of projects such as Healthy Stores 2020.
- Piloting of the CO-creation and evaluation of food environments to Advance Community Health (COACH) framework, initially in a regional Victorian healthcare service setting.
- Evaluation of targeted implementation support as part of the Promoting CHANGE study.
Objective 3: Develop tools and resources for use in initiative co-development and implementation.
Existing and newly emerging tools to address this objective include:
- The Store Scout decision support tool to appraise retail practice against best practice standards for improved health in remote store food environments.
- Systems Thinking In Community Knowledge Exchange (STICKE) software to support thinking and acting on complex systems.
- The Good Tucker App, a healthy food classification tool for use at point of sale.
- The Food Fox system for translating retailer sales data to food and nutrient reference values, with benchmarking against healthy diet recommendations.
- The Healthy Diets Australian Standardised Affordability and Pricing (ASAP) method which compares the cost, cost differential and affordability of healthy (recommended) and current (unhealthy) diets in Australia.
- Informed by the Healthy Stores 2020 project, and stakeholder conversations, a series of policy options have been developed to to support store owners and retailers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to inform store nutrition policies and adopt healthier retail strategies.
resources for this stream
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