We focus on four complex health issues more prevalent in urban areas
With the Social Progress Imperative, we've developed the first neighbourhood level, health-focused social progress index of its kind.
With Wellcome Trust
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Children's health and food
We're developing a new campaigning and policy influencing partnership, to reduce the amount of unhealthy food children eat.
Partner: Sustain
Funding amount: Up to £450,000
Duration: December 2019 – December 2022
Programme: Children’s health and food
We’re joining forces with Sustain for a three-year, multi-project partnership to reduce children’s consumption of unhealthy food and drink in Lambeth and Southwark.
Over the course of the partnership, Sustain will build up an evidence base to identify and prioritise the key national policy calls to tackle childhood obesity. This partnership will help us learn, share and influence decision making at a local and national level.
We have already supported Sustain with Pester Power or Parents Power, a report investigating parents’ views of child-friendly characters on food and drink packaging.
This survey was the first of its kind and has collected the views of a range of parents and carers across the UK regarding the use of child-friendly characters on food and drink packaging. The report demonstrates that there is a clear and overwhelming agreement from parents that the use of cartoon characters on high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) food and drinks must end.
This report is one of several key outputs we will use to help us influence the right people, for the biggest impact.
Through this partnership we aim to answer the following questions:
At the end of the three years, we expect Sustain to have tested, built evidence and campaigned for greater local powers to reduce the consumption of unhealthy products, and help create an environment where there is an even stronger appetite for change.
We’ve learnt that working with existing businesses and within existing policies isn’t enough to close the childhood obesity inequality gap. Beyond scaling-up what we’re already doing in our home, school and street strands, we need to change the current policy constraints that dictate the whole food system.
Though a positive start, campaigns such as the proposed TV ad ban on unhealthy brands aren’t enough to protect children from online marketing and other well-established tactics like the use of kid’s characters on unhealthy products. Our young people are flooded with the least nutritious options and it goes largely unchallenged.
In the meantime, big chains like KFC and McDonalds are planning aggressive expansion plans over the next 10 years in the UK.
We have an opportunity to build on the momentum created by campaigns like the TFL junk food ad ban, which is already making a difference to the types of food young people are exposed to every day.
Sustain is a national alliance of around 100 non-profits who are focused on advocating for better food and farming in the UK, including our partners the Alexandra Rose Foundation and School Food Matters.
Louise Foreman leads our work on campaigning to reduce unhealthy food consumption.
With Ascension Ventures, Big Society Capital and Mission Ventures
With ShareAction
With SMASH app