Tackling Food Poverty

• Project start date: 11 October 2003
• Project status: Completed
• Discipline: Food marketing

Research objective

The Decent Food for All project aimed to increase physical, financial and information access to safe healthy food in twelve deprived/highly deprived wards in the Armagh and Dungannon Health Action Zone (ADHAZ) area.

Outputs

Research report

• Title: Tackling Food Poverty
• Publication date: 6 July 2009
• Summary: Decent Food for All (DFfA) was a four-year community-based project developed and implemented by the Armagh and Dungannon Health Action Zone (ADHAZ) Partnership. This report is an evaluation of the project.
• Findings:
  • Between 2003 and 2007, the DFfA Community Food Team delivered approximately 370 core activities to approximately 3,100 residents. 
  • These activities were very well received by participants who reported substantial improvements in their knowledge, attitudes and skills. 
  • Approximately 1 in 8 residents of the intervention area participated in at least one DFfA core activity. 
  • DFfA materials are now being incorporated into a wider food poverty toolkit to support community-based health education across Northern Ireland that is being developed by FSANI. 

  At the end of the intervention period, DFfA was recognised by less than 10% of adults living in the ADHAZ area. 

  At the community-level, the DFfA intervention achieved some significant improvements: 

  • Increase in self-reported confidence in knowledge and abilities about four food matters 
  • Increase in the self-reported consumption of fruit and vegetables 
  • Some reduction in the self-reported consumption of foods high in fat or sugar 
  • Increase in self-reported levels of physical activity 
  • Increase in safe food safety practices. 

  These behavioural changes, however, were not accompanied by improvements in awareness and knowledge or the self-reported levels of obesity/overweight. 

  The DFfA intervention achieved particular success in rural areas and particularly disadvantaged wards in the already deprived/highly deprived intervention area. However, there was no clear relationship between these impacts and the types of areas in which the most DFfA core activities were delivered. 

  The somewhat weak policy context that existed during most of the intervention period limited DFfA’s potential to achieve further impacts at the community level: 

  • During the intervention period, there were mixed changes in the availability and price of food: the availability and price of food products – both unhealthy as well as healthy – increased 
  • The proportion of adults who, in the last six months, had cut their weekly food spending to pay other household bills did not change during the intervention period. 
• Recommendations:
  1. Local action is an essential part of efforts to promote an affordable, safe, healthy diet. 
  2. If local action is to achieve greater and sustainable impact at the community-level, it must be properly embedded into a more comprehensive approach. 
  3. Greater effort is required to better coordinate the work of researchers/evaluators, public health practitioners and policy makers, and the community. 
  4. An all-island approach is necessary to effectively tackle food poverty and obesity.