Project aims to help overcome barriers to eating fruit and veg in social housing
A mobile greengrocer and vouchers for fruit and veg are among the innovations being trialled by researchers to boost healthy diets among those in social housing.
The initiatives are part of a major study aiming to address dietary inequalities and improve the life chances of people living in social housing in Liverpool, which has been awarded £1.46 million in funding by UKRI.
Led by the University of Liverpool in collaboration with the University of Cambridge and several non-academic partners, the Supporting Communities in social Housing and Optimising Urban food System interventions for Equity (Schouse) project is looking to better understand the reasons behind difficulties social housing tenants face in consuming a healthy diet and accessing affordable healthy foods.
Study lead Professor Charlotte Hardman from the Department of Psychology in Liverpool said: “People who live in social housing can face difficulties in accessing healthy diets and often struggle to afford to eat and need to access food banks”.
“This is partly because of material disadvantages faced, such as lower incomes or lack of good-quality employment opportunities. But it may also be because the places they live offer fewer opportunities to buy affordable fresh healthy foods.
“Poor diet and ill-health are strongly linked, and people in social housing are more likely to have diet-related health conditions.”
Innovative solutions
The Schouse study aims to better understand the reasons behind these issues, why they exist and what can be done about them to improve the life chances of people living in social housing. Its activities predominantly focus on Liverpool, which has some of the most deprived areas and highest rates of obesity in the UK.
The researchers will investigate the factors leading to people in social housing having poorer diets, looking at how a range of issues affect people and the places they live in, and mapping the features of places relating to food access and diet in Liverpool into an interactive tool to better target future interventions.
In partnership with three major social housing associations in Liverpool, local social enterprise Alchemic Kitchen, and Alexandra Rose Charity, the project will also deliver, test and evaluate two interventions aimed at helping residents of social housing to access affordable healthy foods – use of a mobile greengrocer van and provision of vouchers for purchasing fruit and vegetables at the mobile greengrocer. Local residents will be involved in co-designing the intervention.
The research team will then forecast the short- and long-term health impacts of these interventions, using a computer model to predict the number of cases of diseases and deaths that could be averted by expanding the interventions to the whole of Liverpool and England.
Study co-lead Dr Rachel Loopstra from the Department of Public Health, Policy and Systems at the University of Liverpool, said: “Our academic team brings together many different areas of expertise, spanning psychology, public health, nutrition, epidemiology, health geography, health economics, modelling, systems science and statistics.
“We will work closely with our project partners to co-produce and deliver this important research, and widely share findings at local, regional and national scale across different sectors.
“We expect that our project will produce new evidence on how we can support healthier diets among people living in social housing in a scalable way that can be deployed in other areas”.
