Background: Food environments are the collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food and beverage choices and nutritional status. Applying a systems approach to improving food environments through food policy takes the entire system into consideration and can facilitate the identification of true solutions, understand the indirect effects and unintended consequences of actions and inform the prioritisation of data collection. Urban cities host over half the world’s population with the projection increasing further in the foreseeable future. In the context of a rapidly urbanizing world, the global food systems challenges have become serious challenges for cities. Thus, cities have a key role in addressing these challenges for their own populations and for the global community. Indeed, the UN Sustainable Development Goals blueprint highlights the need to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. To confront these issues many urban cities and local governments are moving to developing urban food policies.

Method: To truly develop an urban food policy which acknowledges that cities have a role to play in developing sustainable food systems and promoting healthy diets, requires an understanding and evaluation of policy activity at a national and supranational level. The Food EPI (environmental policy index) provides a mechanism by which to contextualise national level policies and to assess the extent of implementation of policies and infrastructure support for creating healthy food environments by (national) governments compared to international best practice.  Through the INFORMAS and PEN networks over thirty countries worldwide are conducting Food Environment Policy Index audits at national level and through PEN the tool has been adapted at a supranational level to evaluate European level policies.

Challenge: The challenge that remains is how to apply the learning from INFORMAS and PEN to contextualise and assess policy-level action at municipal level? Achieving this will enable translation of evidence to actionable knowledge to inform the development and implementation of urban food policies to support healthier, more sustainable and resilient food systems at local levels.

Background: This study is part of an effort to employ tools to gather empirical data on national physical activity policies. It was conducted as part of the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN; see https://www.jpi-pen.eu/), a project consortium composed of 28 research institutions from seven European countries and New Zealand that was funded by the Joint Programming Initiative on a Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI HDHL; see https://www.healthydietforhealthylife.eu/). PEN’s vision is to provide Europe with tools to identify, evaluate and benchmark policies designed to directly or indirectly address insufficient physical activity, unhealthy diets and sedentary behaviour while accounting for existing health inequities.

Method: Four countries were selected as case examples from the total of eight PEN countries to ensure a level of variation regarding geography (Western and Central Europe), population size (small, medium and large), and system of government (centralist vs. federalist). Data were collected using Version 2 of the Policy Audit Tool, a standardized instrument to assess national policy approaches to physical activity.  In all four countries, data collection was academia-driven and coordinated by the participating PEN scientists.

Results: Data were collected between March and October 2019. Results present evidence of the presence of legislation, policy and action plans by sectors for each country, information on most influential policies and the role of an evidence-base of policies.  The comparative analysis of national policy documents shows that the health, sport, education, transport, and environment/urban planning sectors are most relevant when it comes to promoting physical activity in the four countries. Health was the main focus with sustainability mentioned less often.

Conclusion: This study has obtained a number of interesting and potentially relevant results that provide an in-depth view of the status of physical activity policy in European countries with different backgrounds, it highlights similarities and differences, and showcases important policy and context variables. As such, it may be useful as a basis for the development of more advanced tools to benchmark physcial activity policies and provide policy advice on health and sustainability to governments in the future.

This session describes the 2-year ASAPa project, the Australian systems approach to physical activity (PA). Australian PA policy advanced well in the decade following the release of the first US Surgeon General Report in 1996 but foundered thereafter. It would take another decade before, positive developments emerged at the national level with the Federal Government’s release of Sport 2030, presenting a vision and plan for sport and PA and partnering with Australia’s sporting, PA, technology, education and corporate community. ASAPa also commenced its work in the same year.

ASAPa was set up to map policies, programs and prevalence metrics across Australia, at the state and federal level. Initial actions were to host two national workshops in 2018 with stakeholders from all relevant jurisdictions and sectors, with a focus on identifying policies and programs for PA among adults. These workshops enabled the development of a systems-focussed policy framework for PA in Australia.

A review of the policies identified, found considerable action related to the planning and transport sectors to promote more active environments, and indications of multi-sectoral engagement in policy development and implementation. However, most policies did not describe any clear arrangements for funding or indicators to support and monitor their implementation. A review of programs found that most were aimed at sport and recreation domain, with far fewer programs directed at the planning and transport domains or using environmental or transportation interventions. Data obtained about program reach and implementation suggest limitations in current evaluation practices. The reviews have highlighted areas of opportunity where current policy and practice could be strengthened.

In addition, a review of state-based surveillance systems indicated substantial differences in the measures used to monitor PA amongst Australian adults, which lead to substantial prevalence variation across jurisdictions. Furthermore, changes to the questions within jurisdiction led to remarkable acute changes in the proportion meeting PA recommended levels in some jurisdictions, without clear explanation of these findings. These data point to a clear need for standardisation and harmonisation of PA surveillance systems across Australia, in order to monitor trends over time in a systematic way.