N.Y. Food application has been handed in

Finally, after 9 months of hard work and coordination it happened! The N.Y. Food application for a Research Alliance financed by the strategic research council has been handed in. The Social Software ISSP focus group has played a key role in giving birth to the application, but especially The Danish Cancer Society and Aalborg University have been main actors in working the application through the final phase and getting it done. The other hardworking partners in the alliance are Metropolitan City University, Glostrup Hospital, Roskilde University, University of Southern Denmark, and MAPP-AU. Below you may read the summary of the research alliance applied for and then cross your fingers and wish us luck - we'll know in December.     

Summary:

The increasing prevalence of diet-related diseases and its subsequent health inequality in the population pose major societal challenges for the 21^st century. Evidence shows that current strategies for changing food behaviour are insufficient to counteract these challenges. It is crucial to develop and explore new strategies that make healthy choices easy choices. Nudging seems to be the most promising among such strategies. Nudging is an interdisciplinary public policy paradigm which aims to influence human decision making by changing psychological, social, and structural context cues, without forbidding any options or making alternatives more costly in terms of time, trouble, and social sanctions. This makes nudging an often inexpensive approach that potentially reaches everybody without requiring elaborate decision-making effort. A typical example of a health-promoting nudge intervention in foodscapes is making healthy foods the default option, and priming dietary norms and values, where foodscapes include both physical and social settings and their interactions in between. N.Y.FOOD aims to understand the potential and limitations of nudging in promoting healthy food choices among young people (15-25 yrs). N.Y.FOOD will establish and test which types of nudges are effective, ethically and publicly acceptable in the Danish foodscapes and society. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary research alliance which develops methods for systematic construction and efficacy assessment of nudges, in cooperation with external partners who will help implement and embed nudges in society. N.Y.FOOD seeks to promote the health of youth and at the same time reduce social inequality in health. N.Y.FOOD will also contribute to an ethics and policy discussion of the use of nudging in public health nutrition promotion.


You can read much more about nudging at http://inudgeyou.blogspot.com/. If you want to know more about the application you are welcome to contact Pelle Guldborg Hansen at peha@sam.sdu.dk