Informing food support through localised insights
Over 8 million adults and 1 in 5 households with children must regularly skip meals or restrict their portions due to a lack of access to food.
Food insecurity, alongside poor diet, affects public health outcomes and worsens inequalities. Despite this, decision-makers have often gone without detailed, localised data to help them target their support.
To lay the foundations for positive change, the University of Leeds’s Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) partnered with Which? to develop a tool to identify the neighbourhoods most in need of support to access affordable and healthy sources of food.
The Priority Places for Food Index (PPFI) is an easy-to-use tool that supports charities, councils, retailers, and campaigners to direct their efforts and effectively tackle the food crisis.
Video summary
Impact
- Knowledge discovery: used data to find out which areas of the UK were most likely to need support to access healthy and affordable food
- Policy impact: informed policymakers and civic partners about which areas are most vulnerable to increases in the cost of living and have limited accessibility to nutritious and sustainable food options
- Health impact: improved access to affordable food by working with supermarkets, charities, retailers, and campaigners.
Key information
- Major funders: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
- Partners and collaborators: Which?, BBC Verify, the Food Foundation, VegPower
- Disciplines: data analysis
- Investigators: Professor Michelle Morris, Dr Peter Baudains, Dr Fran Pontin, Dr Alex Hambley, Robyn Naisbitt, Dr Emily Ennis, Dr Rachel Oldroyd, Dr Andy Newing, Professor Nik Lomax, Ahmad Ammash, Abdelrahman Ibrahim.
Lacking data and coordination
Food insecurity is a growing and urgent issue in the UK, made worse by the rising cost-of-living crisis.
Lack of access to adequate food severely affects people’s physical and mental health and often goes hand-in-hand with other social and economic difficulties.
The increasing cost of ingredients, transport, gas, and other necessities means that those with the tightest budgets struggle to get affordable, let alone healthy, meals.
Without clear, local-level insights, though, it has been difficult to know for sure which communities are most in need of support accessing food, and why. This means that interventions may not have benefited areas that need support the most.
Due to the lack of data, retailers, charities, consumer groups, policymakers, and local authorities have had disparate information and approaches to reducing food poverty.
Professor Michelle Morris, academic lead for PPFI, said: “With so many people in the UK already suffering from food insecurity and the cost of living crisis making that much worse, we need to do all that we can to support those most in need to access affordable, healthy and sustainable foods.
“That is why we developed the Priority Places for Food Index in collaboration with Which?. Our interactive map makes it easy to identify neighbourhoods most in need of support and highlights the main reasons that they need this support, recognising that one size does not fit all and that tailored help is required.”
Bringing data together
To be effective, the Priority Places for Food Index (PPFI) needed to include many levels of information, such as proximity to and accessibility of shops, access to online deliveries, and proximity to non-supermarket provision.
These were used alongside socio-demographic information like income deprivation, car ownership, indicators of fuel poverty, and the need for family food support derived from information on children in relatively low-income families, healthy start voucher updates, and the distance to the nearest foodbank.
“By combining these data,” said Dr Pontin, "we can highlight where there are multiple factors that make it hard for communities to access affordable, nutritious food and enable a more targeted approach to support for these communities."
She reflects that "transparent data tools can shift how people think and act – especially when they are designed collaboratively."
Building the PPFI tool wasn’t straightforward; the team had to navigate complicated and misaligned datasets.
The brilliance of the PPFI tool is that it is accessible to many types of stakeholders, including those who wouldn’t typically work with data.
The team designed an interactive dashboard that could be easily used by communities, charities, and policymakers alike, removing the technical barriers to working with these complex data.
In addition to the dashboard, the underlying, research-ready data are available openly so that others can use these data in their own research or decision making, increasing reach and impact in the communities most in need of support with food.
The team have updated the PPFI’s interface and underlying data to reflect new policy landscapes and user feedback, learning through an iterative process of design, engagement, and testing.
Professor Morris said: “Through collaboration with Which? With the expertise of the multidisciplinary team at CDRC, we were able to fill a much-needed gap with this impactful tool.
“Wide stakeholder engagement and follow-on projects that use PPFI allowed us to collate feedback, alongside keeping up with the food data landscape to ensure the index and interface remain current in version 2.”
Collaboration across disciplines and sectors
Developing the PPFI was a highly collaborative effort. The idea for the PPFI was built upon Professor Morris’ expertise in Data Science for Food and harnessed the experience of long-standing collaborators.
The data delivery and dashboard development were possible with the spatial data science expertise of the CDRC Research data science team, of which Dr Pontin was an integral member.
CDRC Impact Manager Dr Emily Ennis built in impact from the outset, while Communications and Engagement Manager Robyn Naisbitt worked with Which? to bring the project to the public with clear messaging in a targeted, co-produced communications campaign. This unique bringing together of expertise at the CDRC and Which? made PPFI possible.
Building on the success of PPFI version one, the team grew for version two. This involved post-doctoral researchers, research software engineers, and early-career data scientists.
Collectively, the team engaged with a variety of stakeholders, hosting webinars and workshops, working alongside BBC Verify, the Food Foundation, and VegPower, who used PPFI in their own work. The PPFI was used to create evidence for the UK Government’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee – including by Dr Pontin, who gave evidence at the House of Commons.
Used by supermarkets, public health organisations, and in parliament
The PPFI has had a significant national impact, having been recognised across food, health, and civic organisations.
The tool has been:
- Used by supermarkets to improve access to affordable food
- Accessed over 19,000 times by over 12,000 users
- Evidence given to parliament in respect to fairness in the food supply chain.
- Used as a tool in many additional research projects, including the first evaluation of High in Fat, Salt and Sugar (HFSS) legislation (led by Professor Morris).
The PPFI sparked more co-produced projects, including mapping food insecurity and health in Oxfordshire and guiding surplus food distribution networks.
“The PPFI is a core metric for some of our top priority areas, such as reducing food poverty,” said Stuart Newstead, non-executive director at Good Food Oxfordshire.
“We like the PPFI because it’s relevant to us, it’s multi-dimensional – so we can use it holistically or with different dimensions of food insecurity, it’s easy to explain, and it can be tested and developed against our practical realities locally.”
The tool, research team and project won the University of Leeds’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards 2024, taking home an award for ‘mature economic impact’.
View the Priority Places for Food Index.