How much progress have (national, provincial, territorial) governments made towards good practices in improving food environments and implementing obesity and non-communicable diseases prevention policies and actions?
This module aims to monitor current government policies at the national, provincial and territorial levels that influence the food environment using the Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI).
Food- EPI is a tool and process developed by the global INFORMAS to assess Canadian food environment policies compared to best practices within two primary components: 1) policy and 2) infrastructure support. Within these components, 7 policy ‘domains’ (food composition, food labelling, food marketing, food provision, food retail, food prices, and food trade and investment) and 6 infrastructure support ‘domains’ (leadership, governance, monitoring and intelligence, funding and resources, platforms for interaction, and health-in-all-policies) are assessed, using a set of 47 ‘good practice indicators’ for specific policy areas relevant to each domain. For each indicator, a set of international benchmark examples have been compiled to illustrate promising practices whereby governments (at any level) have taken action or implemented policy. A more detailed description of the tool is available here.
Publications related to this module
Vanderlee, L, Goorang, S, Karbasy, K, Vandevijvere, S, L'Abbé, MR. Policies to Create Healthier Food Environments in Canada: Experts' Evaluation and Prioritized Actions Using the Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI). Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019;16(22).