The Fruit Shop - NHSGGC Public Health Resource Unit

eing named as one of the four major themes. Special focus
programmes include further implementation of the Eating for Health
– Diet Action Plan (1996). Here, the workplace has been identified as
a setting to provide opportunities for, and access to, healthy food
choices and to ensure that individuals who have motivation and
skills to make healthier food choices have these choices made
available to them.
This ‘settings’ approach to health promotion also informs the
internationally acknowledged concept of Health Promoting Hospitals
and Scotland’s Health Promoting Health Service (HPHS) framework.
The HPHS applies the principles of health at work to the hospital
setting as a workplace. Building on the HPH concept it also
recognises the hospital as both a public institution and a workplace
‘in which people engage in daily activities in which environmental,
organisational and personal factors interact to affect health and well-
being’ (Paton et al., 2005).
Food Access
Many disadvantaged consumers’ still face significant barriers to
accessing a healthier diet, contributing to high rates of diet-related
diseases and lower life expectancy in low-income communities
(O’Neill 2005). Therefore, implementing strategies to improve food
access in low-income areas could in theory improve the opportunities
of residents of poor neighbourhoods to make healthier choices, reduce
social exclusion and improve general health (Cummins & Macintyre
2004). However, food access is much wider than just being able to
purchase foods.
The term ‘food access’ has been defined in several different ways. It
can be used to define an area where there are no shops, or shops sell
a poor range of healthy foods or where healthy food is unaffordable to
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