Can Eating be a Risk-Free Activity?: Conceptualizing Public Policy Initiatives Aimed at Improving Food-Related Health Outcomes
The BCCDC/NCCEH Environmental Health Seminar Series provides an opportunity for learning and knowledge exchange on a variety of environmental health topics. The seminars can be attended in-person or online.
Speaker: Dr. Shannon Majowicz, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo
Abstract: Food and health are intimately intertwined, and what we eat is influenced by a complex web of individual and environmental drivers, such as socioeconomic status, culture, politics, economics, trade, legislation, and our built and natural environments. Although all food-related polices integrate at the moment of consumption, policies aimed at influencing food-health outcomes are primarily developed within silos (e.g., food safety efforts, sustainability initiatives, school allergy policies), each focused on optimizing a particular outcome. Since ‘solving problems’ in one domain may create new problems in another, understanding the complex interactions between public policy initiatives aimed at improving specific food-related outcomes is imperative. This presentation will describe a current project whose objective is to apply a systems lens to the intersections between population-level efforts in the areas of food safety, food security, obesity, allergy, and other food-health outcomes.