UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded a £1.53 million grant for major study aiming to address dietary inequalities and improve the life chances of people living in social housing in Liverpool.

Dr Alexia Sawyer of the MRC Epidemiology Unit is a co-investigator on this project, which is led by the University of Liverpool in collaboration with University of Cambridge, and involves several non-academic partners including Alchemic Kitchen/Foodrise, Alexandra Rose Charity, Feeding Liverpool, Health Equalities Group, Liverpool City Council, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, Onward Homes, Riverside Group and Torus Foundation.

Six UKRI-funded projects announced to reduce food inequalities

This project is one of six across the UK that seek to tackle growing food inequality as part of UKRI’s creating opportunities, improving outcomes strategic theme which focuses on research that improves outcomes for people and places across the UK by identifying solutions that promote economic and social prosperity, working with partners in local government, industry, local communities and beyond.

Researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit will be involved in two of these six projects. In addition to the Liverpool project disussed here, Professor Jean Adams will lead a team of researchers who will deliver workshops in local authorities with more deprived populations across England, working with them to develop and implement new policies to reduce local food inequalities.

Understanding the connection between social housing and poor diet in Liverpool

The Liverpool-based Supporting Communities in social Housing and Optimising Urban food System interventions for Equity (SCHOUSE) project seeks 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 at the University of 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 and healthy foods. Poor diet and ill-health are strongly linked, and people in social housing are more likely to have diet-related health conditions.”

The SCHOUSE study seeks 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 the 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 a 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”.

Working with communities to inprove healthy food access

Dr Alexia Sawyer of the MRC Epidemiology Unit is a co-investivator and the University of Cambridge lead for this study. She will contribute to work package 1, which will seek to understand the drivers of health inequalities in social housing, and will co-lead work package 2, co-designing, delivering and evaluating place-based interventions. Dr Sawyer commented:

I am excited to work with colleagues at the University of Liverpool on this important study. Research shows that it can be a challenge for people living in social housing to access and afford a healthy diet. This means that fewer people living in social housing have the opportunity to benefit from a nutritious diet and can therefore be more likely to develop diet-related illnesses.”

Together with our non-academic partners on the study, we will work closely with residents and stakeholders in Liverpool to understand and act on food access in these communities. We will use group model building techniques to co-design elements of two interventions: a mobile greengrocer and vouchers for purchasing fruit and vegetables. Our evaluation of these interventions will indicate the potential benefit of extending them in Liverpool and beyond”