Grant: Team Grant: Environments and Health - LOI - Agri-food

Our team grant will establish Healthy Corner Stores NL 2020, a five-year program to scale up research towards improving our understanding of the retail food environment in Newfoundland and Labrador, and accelerating policy and program actions towards healthier retail environments in multiple jurisdictions. This work will be led by a vibrant team of research, business, community, and government partners in NL, Ontario, and the Northern Territory, Australia. Our focus is on evaluating supports for and sharing knowledge to build capacity among small independent food retailers in rural and remote communities. This work will help to establish better scientific evidence and systems-level policy supports for retailers and communities who can equally be considered as health promotion champions in a shift towards excellent population access to quality, healthier, and affordable food. Specifically we are going to: 1. Complete a 3 year, cross-jurisdictional impact evaluation of a healthy corner store intervention using a research design called a stepped wedge where communities and stores enrol on multiple baseline time points. We are going to study 8 rural and remote communities across NL and NT-Australia. 2. Establish a coordinated healthy retail network of research, business, and policy partners in NL, ON, and NT-Australia to offer advice and mentorship. 3. Drawing from 1 and 2, prepare a comprehensive evidence-informed analysis of policy options for federal and provincial/territorial jurisdictions in Canada to establish systems-level supports for effective healthy corner store interventions.