INFORMATION RESOURCES ON FOOD AND HEALTH

Regional policy and action plans

Investment for Health (2003)

The East Midlands Regional Assembly produced the public health strategy Investment for Health. This sets out five main policy priorities for improving the health of the East Midlands’ population, and diet has been identified as one of these. Objective 5 of the document aims to ‘Improve the diet of families’ in the region.

The strategy identified the following key priorities for the region:

To develop and implement an integrated Regional Food and Health Strategy.
Facilitate the establishment of a multi-agency Regional Food Forum / Steering group to oversee the implementation of the Regional Food and Health strategy.
Support the review of the Welfare Food Scheme through the 'Healthy Start ' programme.
Promote a whole school approach to healthy eating including the roll out of the National School Fruit Scheme.
Pilot a national 'Food in Schools Programme’ project within the East Midlands.
Increase awareness of, improve access to and increase consumption of Fruit and Vegetables through local five-a-day initiatives.

The East Midlands Food and Health Action Plan

The East Midlands Food and Health Action Plan, (FAHAP) was launched on the 26th July 2006, and sets out a framework in which everyone with an influence on what we eat - from food producers and processors to the NHS, local authorities, schools, caterers, retailers, the media and, of course, consumers themselves can work together to bring about improvements in diet and food safety in the East Midlands. From the outset. a cross-section of key national and regional stakeholders were involved in the development of the action plan.

The aims of the East Midlands Food and Health Action Plan are:

To improve the diet of pregnant women and pre-school children aged 0-4 years
To improve the diet of children and young people
To improve the diet of older people
To promote healthy eating within the workplace
To ensure all NHS premises offer appropriate food choices to support healthy lifestyles
To improve the cooking skills of the population
To ensure that food in the home is safe to eat
To ensure that all residents within the East Midlands have easy access to affordable healthy food
To ensure the effective co-ordination and implementation of the East Midlands Food and Health Action Plan

You can find more information about food and nutrition in the East Midlands on the EMPHASIS webpages: www.emphasisnetwork.org.uk

Local Area Agreements

Since the 2001 Local Government White Paper ‘Strong Local Leadership: Quality Public Services’, local authorities have had a duty to form Local Strategic Partnerships to ensure joined up working between Local Authorities, Primary Care Trusts, the Police, the voluntary and community sector and other local stakeholders.

From 2008 a new framework is in place which aims to place more emphasis on area based service delivery, give more freedom in spending decisions and have fewer central targets and reporting systems. Each LAA must contain no more than 35 negotiated targets, alongside 18 statutory education and early year’s targets. There exists a Single Set of National Indicators, which contains 198 indicators that local areas must report on annually, and local areas are encouraged to choose from this set for inclusion in their LAA. Out of the 198 indicators only two relate to diet and health, including NI 52: Percentage of Pupils who have school lunches/Take up of school lunches and NI 53: Prevalence of breastfeeding at 6-8 weeks. Relatively few area within the East Midlands have included a diet-related target within their current LAAs, though many areas have included obesity related targets which diet-related initiatives should play a key role.

The Food Standards Agency has published some guidance on developing targets and performance indicators relating to Food and Health for LAAs:

www.emphasisnetwork.org.uk/news/fsalaaguidance.htm

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PAGE CREATED: 1 April 2007 | PAGE REVISED: 7 July 2009