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Community lived experience should be central to food systems policy

Nature Food volume 4, pages 7–9 (2023)Cite this article

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Lived experience research recognizes the inherent expertise of communities, and challenges existing power imbalances in policy processes. Yet, without a strong rationale for including community lived experience, researchers, practitioners, community members and policymakers may face pushback when seeking to move community voice to the centre of food systems policy processes.

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Fig. 1: Communities’ lived experiences should be a core component of efforts to challenge structural inequities.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Institute for Health Transformation, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

    Christina Zorbas & Kathryn Backholer

  2. The Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Dheepa Jeyapalan & Veronica Nunez

Authors
  1. Christina Zorbas
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  2. Dheepa Jeyapalan
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  3. Veronica Nunez
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  4. Kathryn Backholer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina Zorbas.

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Competing interests

C.Z. and K.B. have received funding from Deakin University, the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth), the National Heart Foundation of Australia, the Australian Research Council, UNICEF, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, Cancer Council Victoria, the Public Health Association of Australia, the International Congress on Obesity and the Victorian Government. D.J. and V.N. declare no competing interests.

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Nature Food thanks Shailesh Shukla and Mark Spires for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Zorbas, C., Jeyapalan, D., Nunez, V. et al. Community lived experience should be central to food systems policy. Nat Food 4, 7–9 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00676-8

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