Project title: Reshaping Urban Retail Food Environments in the East Asia and Pacific Region.
Time period: 2021-ongoing
Research leads: Professor Adrian Cameron, Dr Tailane Scapin, Professor Gary Sacks.
Funding: UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office

Impact summary

  • The RESHAPE initiative enhanced the understanding of retail food environments in the East Asia/Pacific region; enabled collaborative problem-solving between researchers, government offices, and retailers; and fostered knowledge-sharing across countries.
  • With at least 27 large food retailers informed of the project, and 10 actively engaged in the development of healthy food retail initiatives so far across four countries, the project was the first of its kind in the region to support retailer actions in promoting healthy diets.
  • As a result of the project, UNICEF country offices reported a deeper understanding of how retail food environments impact purchasing behaviours and diets, and increased confidence in engaging with retailers to progress the agenda to tackle unhealthy food environments in the region.
  • Retailers and governments in East Asia have begun collaborations working towards healthier retail food environments, although the final impact on purchasing behaviours and childhood obesity rates will not be known for some time.
  • The initiative resulted in a large range of resources being used by UNICEF country offices, including reports, surveys, and datasets. Organised in a comprehensive project website, they are being used to guide ongoing efforts and inspire further engagement in improving retail food environments across the region.
  • This project is four years into its implementation by UNICEF. These initial impact results are encouraging and show potential for further greater impact in the future.

Tackling the rise of poor dietary behaviour among young people in the East Asia/Pacific region

 UNICEF estimates that 90 million children and adolescents are overweight or obese in the East Asia/Pacific region, including 11 million children under the age of five. Changes in retail food environments have contributed to this trend by increasing the availability, accessibility, and marketing of highly-processed, unhealthy foods.

Project manager Dr Tailane Scapin says there was a lack of research on retail food environments in the East Asia/Pacific region, particularly in relation to dietary behaviours.

“UNICEF has historically focused on undernutrition in the region,” she says. “But with obesity rates rising fast in children and adolescents, they knew they also needed to also address this issue and so they began to focus on understanding the ways that UNICEF could help create food environments that promote healthier diets for children and their families.”

UNICEF and Deakin partner up

In 2021, UNICEF teamed up with researchers from GLOBE to think about how research could help create healthier food environments.

Professor Adrian Cameron leads a Centre of Research Excellence focused on healthy retail food environments said that “we knew that food environments were changing rapidly in many countries in East Asia as they developed economically but there was very little research to document these changes and understand how communities were changing the way they purchased their food.”

He also noted that “evidence from around the world has shown that once supermarkets and convenience stores take over, the availability and marketing of unhealthy packaged foods and drinks goes through the roof. Once they are established, that’s really hard to change”.

So a research collaboration was born, with the goal of guiding food retailers in the region towards a food environment that promotes healthy diets for children and their families. Conducted in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, the goals of the project were to:

  • understand the structure of retail food environments in the East Asia/Pacific region,
  • explore how communities interact with these environments, and
  • use these findings to build a business case for engaging with retailers to promote practices that support health and nutrition through retail settings.

“We started by mapping out the spread of major retailers (supermarkets and convenience stores) in five countries in the region, and then conducted surveys with adolescents and caregivers of young children to understand how they interact with those spaces and their food choices,” Dr Scapin says.

“We also engaged more than 180 people interested in transforming the retail food environment in the region in different communication activities – including online workshops, surveys and regular meetings – to come together to understand the problems and find solutions. UNICEF then, with our support, started engaging with major retailers to select and test innovative solutions for promoting healthier diets in their stores – which is happening at this stage.”

Research enhances knowledge, partnerships and advocacy

The collaboration has generated new insights into the retail food environment in the East Asia/Pacific region; led to governments also being involved, and meant that retailers in East Asia are now prioritising the promotion of healthier food and diets for children.

“One of the major milestones was the large network of people we engaged with who became interested in improving the food retail environments in the region,” Scapin says. “Especially the major retailers who have the power to influence what people buy.”

In China, the initiative has already led to one major retailer testing significant changes to their store to promote healthier foods, with plans for expansion across other retailers in the country. This success has resulted in the inclusion of healthy food retail in UNICEF China’s next five-year country program cycle, and its incorporation into the offices’ 2024-2025 Rolling Work Plan, endorsed by the National Health Commission and with plans to have a national impact.

In Indonesia, healthy food retail is also on UNICEF’s ongoing agenda and in Malaysia, the Ministry of Health is working with UNICEF and receiving advice from Deakin University to help many of that country’s largest retailers adopt practices that promote healthier diets.

In the Philippines, a major retailer has signed an agreement with UNICEF to launch a healthy retail initiative in 2025, with technical expertise from Deakin researchers and in Thailand, UNICEF and Deakin supported another major retailer with best practice recommendations for a healthy food checkout initiative.

Long-term approach essential

While the collaboration between UNICEF and Deakin has made significant progress towards healthier retail food environments, the full impact on both retail changes and childhood obesity rates will take time to materialise. A long-term approach is essential to drive widespread transformation in the retail food sector. The scale of the change required for population impact is enormous.

Retailers’ voluntary uptake of actions has been a promising first step and they clearly see these as being good for the long-term health of their business. But in areas where retailers are reluctant to make changes, government-led mandatory policies are likely to provide an even playing field where all retailers can make changes without fearing a loss of their competitive advantage. Policy change will also take time to materialise, and monitoring of progress toward either voluntary or policy-drive change will be critical to ensure momentum is maintained.

Achieving regional impacts will require ongoing collaboration and formal commitments from retailers. “We are just in the early stages of seeing the impact and solutions of this work,” Dr Scapin says. “Long-term transformation requires commitment from a wide range of actors involved in the food system and with the power to drive change, from customers to NGOs, retailers and governments.”

Professor Cameron concluded that “One of the main things we would like to see going forward is more government involvement in this agenda. Having government offices setting clear policy goals will help drive change by retailers and will be a significant step towards the prevention of childhood obesity in East Asia and the Pacific.”

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Written by Nathan Scolaro

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