Despite growing awareness of diet related health risks and environmental impacts, food environments in and around schools often promote unhealthy and unsustainable food choices. This contributes to unhealthy dietary patterns, social inequalities and long term public health and sustainability challenges. Schools are key public institutions with the potential to shape food norms, skills and habits early in life, yet they cannot act in isolation from surrounding food environments and governance structures.
This research project aims to shift food environments so that healthy and sustainable options become the easy and attractive choice, particularly for groups facing greater barriers. By focusing on school centric food environments and their wider socio spatial context, the project responds to the need for integrated, place based approaches that connect schools, municipalities, civil society and commercial actors. This will be achieved through three interconnected objectives:
- The project analyses food environments and dietary influences using interdisciplinary methods.
- It tests and co-develops solutions in real world settings through innovation labs in schools and surrounding neighbourhoods, engaging youth, municipalities, food providers, civil society and commercial actors.
- It translates local evidence into policy relevant knowledge through Accelerator Groups that connect practice with national and EU level decision making.
By working across local, national and European levels, the project bridges research, practice and policy to support systemic change towards healthier, more sustainable food environments. It will deliver practical evidence, tools and policy relevant insights to support healthier and more sustainable school centred food environments.
Key outcomes include tested methods for assessing food environments in and around schools, concrete interventions developed through innovation labs, and transferable models for engaging schools, municipalities, civil society and commercial actors.
The project will produce policy recommendations and guidance for local, national and EU level decision makers, supported by insights from Accelerator Groups that translate local experimentation into governance and regulatory pathways. The results will help communities and policymakers scale effective solutions, reduce inequalities in food access, and support long term regional resilience and youth wellbeing.
Nordregio brings expertise in multi level governance and regional development, leading the work package on Accelerator Groups to connect local innovation labs with national and EU policy processes and support the uptake of healthier and more sustainable food environments.
