Food and access to a healthy diet are fundamental to good health and disease prevention, and are significant issues in the health and life expectancy of people living in disadvantaged communities.

Yet, at the start of the Improvement Foundation’s programme, school dinners were in decline, cooking was no longer part of the curriculum and, in many family homes, social and cultural changes meant that fast food was the norm and children could not recognise common fruits and vegetables.

We decided to use the Healthy Communities Collaborative approach to tackle food poverty and to widen access to a healthy diet in seven sites in deprived communities in England from April 2004 to April 2006.

The aims were to:

• Improve the accessibility, affordability, availability, acceptability and awareness of healthier foods in participating communities
• Increase awareness in the general population of those areas, and with the local retailers, of government guidelines on healthy eating, i.e. 5-a-day, reduction in fat and sugar consumption, reducing salt intake
• Offer access to training in basic cooking skills, food preparation and food hygiene
• Develop communities by widening access to a healthy, affordable diet

In setting up the programme, we recognised that: "Food projects are specific to the communities they serve. No single formula can guarantee success or prescribe which projects work in any given situation.” (McGlone, Dowler et al, 2001)

Therefore, the work was underpinned by identifying local community needs through targeting and segmenting sections of the population.

This programme is now complete. If you are interested in working with the Improvement Foundation please go to How we can help or click here to contact us.

Who is involved

The programme involved seven areas: Blackburn with Darwen, Camden, Easington, Gateshead, Hastings, Northampton and Somerset Coast.

Led by a local project manager, teams consist of local residents, and representatives from local authorities, health, voluntary and charitable organisations.

What we are doing

It is widely acknowledged that two generations of people have missed out on developing their cooking skills, but that local communities continue to retain this knowledge among their older residents.

By bringing these people together with professionals from health and education, the Improvement Foundation supported parents and children in learning new skills and increasing their knowledge of food and health.

Having identified their needs, residents worked with local professionals to achieve improvements in their cooking skills and their accessibility to healthy foods. As part of the collaborative process, ideas generated were subsequently shared between sites taking part in the programme.

At the start of the programme the teams surveyed their areas to identify local facilities. Existing food outlets and community food projects were plotted onto maps.

The teams then worked with existing statutory, voluntary and community groups; schools and food shops to set up projects in the local area that reflected the needs of their communities. Teams also looked at improving the quality and reducing the expense of current provision.

In some areas they created training courses and in others linked up with existing further education courses.

Work also included the residential care sector, where teams analysed the composition and variety of meals provided. They actively involved the residents in planning menus and in saying what dishes they would like included.

In each area, PCTs, local authorities and voluntary organisations have embraced the new schemes and helped to ensure they will continue into the future.

By linking the work of the communities directly to local and national policies and strategies, all teams could identify where their own communities sat in respect of the national picture, and what were the most pressing areas for local improvement.

This was a factor in achieving recognition for the importance of the work and influenced decisions to sustain it by alternative funding.

Key results

Other key findings were:

• Each area has its own barriers to healthy eating, which need local solutions
• Lack of cooking skills is widespread - a range of options are needed to address it
• Every piece of work needs to fit with local health delivery plans, and the people with responsibility for the plans need to be aware of each workstream