Access to nutritious, safe, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is essential to good health and is a human right. Many factors within the local food environment, including the proliferation of unhealthy food outlets, impact upon community health and wellbeing. The impact of poor diet on chronic disease is well known, and food insecurity continues to be a critical issue across the NEPHU catchment.
Local government is potentially well positioned to facilitate local food systems transformation; however, a number of challenges exist, including a lack of data.
In response to this, NEPHU partnered with Sustain: The Australian Food Network to deliver this project in collaboration with local governments across the catchment. The project aimed to equip local governments with local food environment mapping data and information. These resources were developed to support future action, particularly in the context of the development and delivery of municipal public health and wellbeing plans.
All local governments in the NEPHU catchment area also were offered a one-year membership to the Sustain Local Government Food Systems Community of Practice to support connections with other food systems change makers.
All 10 participating local governments received a tailored NEPHU Food Environment Maps Report for their local government area. Access to the ArcGIS Living Atlas was also provided to enable interactive analysis against local neighbourhood and population characteristics.
The full report outlines the project methodology, findings and key recommendations. These recommendations provide actionable insights for improving healthy food environments in the NEPHU catchment and creating a healthier, more equitable, and sustainable food system.
