Critical Success Factors for Promoting Healthy Food Environments and Healthy Eating Through Local Policy Changes: Learning From Canada

Background and context: Policies implemented at the local level can create healthier environments that enable individuals to engage in healthier, cancer preventive behaviors - such as healthy eating. Policies support cancer preventive behaviors in a sustainable and often cost-effective manner. Many theoretical frameworks exist to describe the policy process; however in practice, policy development is often considered a complex and unfamiliar mechanism to the cancer prevention and health promotion community. Aim: To identify and better understand the critical success factors underlying cancer prevention policy success, the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer analyzed the policy outcomes - focused on food environments and healthy eating - from their pan-Canadian funding initiative Coalitions Linking Action and Science for Prevention (CLASP). Strategy/Tactics: Four projects funded through the CLASP initiative, from 2009 to 2016, have yielded 260 policy outcomes related to improving food environments and heal...