The aim of stream 1 was to identify the most feasible healthy food retail interventions relevant to supermarkets, remote stores, and food service settings.
Objectives
1. Develop and test innovative methods for co-development and implementation of interventions to create healthier food environments
Drawing on our researchers’ previous work we 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).
2. Determine the central factors that influence intervention adoption and implementation
- 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.
3. Develop tools and resources for use in initiative co-development and implementation
These included:
- 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 were developed to support store owners and retailers in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to inform store nutrition policies and adopt healthier retail strategies.