The US Government hosted the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health[1] this week – the first event of its kind in 53 years. It marks the launch of America’s National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and aims to tackle many of the same issues identified by research carried out by Sprink’s Global Centre for Healthy Food Environments (GCHFE) due to be published on the 26th of October 2022.
It’s been a busy time at Sprink over the last few weeks as we gear up to formally launch the GCHFE and finalise the results of our first research question: ‘What is the definition of a Healthy Food Environment in health care systems?’[2]
Through the research phase, it’s been an honour and a pleasure to work with our Community of Experts on the modified Delphi process we used to answer this research question. The community comprises experts from countries including Chile, South Africa, and the UK, and organisations including EAT, Harvard University, and NHS England.
From this diverse group of people, we’ve gained perspectives that weren’t immediately obvious at the start. This has been extremely valuable. For example, beyond considering the role of making healthy food available in health settings, the modified-Delphi process has also widened our understanding to assess issues such as zoonotic disease transmission, the importance of communal eating, and the role of breastfeeding areas in providing a Healthy Food Environment for infants. These wide-ranging considerations illustrate the strength of the modified Delphi process as a method of distilling expertise to gain consensus. We believe that we have emerged with a strong and compelling definition because of this.
We’re excited to share our findings with you during our virtual launch events on Wednesday 26th October 2022 at 0900 or 1600 BST. You can register for one of the launch events here and we look forward to seeing you there.
We have two fantastic guest speakers confirmed for the events. The first is Veronica Graham, a State Public Health Nutritionist and Manager of Health Promotion and Planning at Western Health, a health system in Australia serving nearly 900,000 people (0900 BST event). The second is Phil Shelley, a senior British civil servant who Chaired the English NHS’s Independent Review of Hospital Food in 2020 and is now working to deliver its recommendations (1600 BST event). They will provide reflections on the results of our research and insights into progress and innovations relating to Healthy Food Environments in their health care systems.
We look forward to sharing our research with you and hope you’ll join us at one of our launch events in October to see how we might work together to make progress in this vital area.
Register your free place for the Global Centre for Healthy Food Environments launch
[1] https://health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/white-house-conference-hunger-nutrition-and-health
[2] https://www.sprink.co.uk/what-is-the-definition-of-a-healthy-food-environment-in-health-care-systems/
