Since individual-level interventions fail to address the contextual drivers of obesity and communicable diseases, we evaluate the effectiveness of food environment policies on improving diet quality and reducing socioeconomic health disparities.
The food environment (accessibility, availability, and affordability) is a primary determinant of dietary quality, yet population-wide policy evaluations remain scarce in the Netherlands. One reason for this might be that traditional epidemiological methods are unable to evaluate effectiveness of policy measures on population wide outcomes. We address this by developing an agent-based model (ABM) which is able to represent complex interactions between individuals and their food environments, accounting for feedback loops and spill-over effects that traditional health impact models often miss. Collaborating with stakeholders, we prioritize policy measures and develop corresponding policy intervention scenarios, such as a national sugar tax, subsidies, or local food zonings. To this end, we develop a causal framework for the effects of the food environment on diet quality as a basis for the model and calibrate the agent-based model using Dutch dietary and demographic data. Finally, we compare results from this agent-based model measuring the effectiveness of different policy measures with traditional modelling methods, In this way, we provide a basis for robust, evidence-based recommendations for policy actions that support healthy dietary choices across all population groups.
The environment we live in has a dominant impact on our health. It explains an estimated seventy percent of the chronic disease burden. Where we live, what we eat, how much we exercise, the air we breathe and whom we associate with; all of these environmental factors play a role. The combination of these factors over the life course is called the exposome. There is general (scientific) consensus that understanding more about the exposome will help explain the current burden of disease and that it provides entry points for prevention and ...
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