Children's health and food

Overview of our programme

We believe that all children should have the opportunity to thrive, no matter where they grow up. A key factor in ensuring this is access to nutritious, affordable food wherever they live, shop or go to school. Our ten-year programme is working to change the food environments in places where children and families spend their time, so that eating well is the easiest – not hardest – thing to do.

We are focusing on the areas in Lambeth and Southwark that are flooded with unhealthy food. By learning what works to change food environments in Lambeth and Southwark, we hope to influence others to take up successful approaches in other urban neighbourhoods.

Families living on lower incomes are disproportionately affected by a lack of access to healthy, affordable food. We set out to understand more about these areas and the communities living there. By coordinating efforts from different organisations and individuals, we aim to impact on unequal access to nutritious food here in Lambeth and Southwark, in other UK cities, and beyond.

Partnering with others

We partner with other organisations in order to deliver projects, conduct research and amplify our results. Our work with partners focuses on shifting incentives in the food environments where families spend time purchasing and consuming food. We champion children’s health by advocating for more nutritious food to be put in the spotlight, whilst also stemming the tide of unhealthy food options faced by children.

As food environments are influenced by businesses, government and our own communities, creating change requires working with a wide range of partners. In practice, this means we layer up different activities and work with a range of organisations to test and run projects that can tackle the issue from many angles.

As a result of the clear link between an area’s average income and the availability of nutritious, affordable food, we focus our efforts in the areas with lower average incomes, where families are disproportionately affected, and rates of food-related ill health are higher.