PREPARATION OF A FOOD POLICY RESPONSE TO A TOPICAL PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM

The policy challenges arising from public health nutrition (PHN) and environmental sustainability problems are unprecedented. Dietary behaviours contribute to 1.4 billion people globally being overweight and obese (1) and are implicated in fourteen of the top twenty determinants of global deaths. (2) Along with an increasing population size, dietary behaviours also place significant demands on the environment to provide a sufficient food supply. Relatedly, diminishing environmental resources (3) and climate change threaten global food and nutrition security (4) with reportedly 868 million people currently undernourished. (5) These PHN and environmental sustainability problems are interconnected and share common dietary causes and solutions – a healthy diet is largely a sustainable diet. (6–12) According to the FAO, sustainable diets are ‘those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations. Sustainable diets are protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources’. (13)”

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“Public policy, as well as community and industry actions are required to achieve healthy and sustainable diets”

This food policy topic is now recognised as an urgent priority by local, state, national and international food policy agencies. This assignment is about food policy formulation and particularly a policy to promote healthy and sustainable diets.

Whereas the focus for this assignment is a critical analysis for making a food policy (i.e. a prospective analysis), the focus for assignment 2 is a critical analysis of how and why a food policy was made (i.e. a retrospective analysis).
Assessment criteria

The assessment will be based on your ability to demonstrate application of the knowledge and skills covered in the unit. This assignment relates to learnings in modules 1–3, and is designed to assess students against Unit Learning Outcomes 1–4.

Specifically, the assignment will be marked according to the following criteria (adapt these to structure the sub-headings in your report):

Description of the evidence for the food policy problem of unhealthy and unsustainable diets (~400 words, 8/60 marks)
Define the policy problem.
Summarise the evidence for the policy problem.
This criteria relates to Food Policy and Public Health learnings in Modules 1 and 2, and Unit Learning Outcomes 1 and 2.

Assessment of the cause(s) of the policy problem (~400 words, 8/60 marks)
Assess the cause(s) of the policy problem in relation to one or more of the following: genetics, dietary behaviour, the food supply, the broader food system, social and environmental circumstances, or something else.
Identify who is responsible for tackling this cause(s).
This criteria relates to Food Policy and Public Health learnings in Modules 2, 3 and 4, and Unit Learning Outcomes 2 and 3.

Review the policy interventions available to promote healthy and sustainable diets (~1200 words, 20/60 marks)
Identify the type of policy intervention(s) to tackle the causes of the policy problem.
Review the evidence (if any) of the risks and benefits for these interventions.
Organise your identified interventions in accordance with the three orders of food system change.
This criteria relates to Food Policy and Public Health learnings in Module 3, and Unit Learning Outcomes 3 and 4.

Formulate a food policy to promote healthy and sustainable diets in the form of a coherent set of policy interventions (~1000 words, 18/60 marks)
Explain who is responsible for overseeing the initiation, management and coordination, and monitoring of the food policy.
Describe the set of policy interventions that makes up your policy.
Describe who is responsible for formulating, implementing and evaluating each of the interventions.

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