Healthy food systems

Key messages

Local food system change is vital to providing access to healthy food and reducing unhealthy options.
Healthy food connect is a model for local food system change.
The model can help communities create healthy changes to local food systems.

Promoting access to healthy food, while limiting access to unhealthy options is an essential part of helping people in the community to eat well.

This means making changes to local food systems to improve the availability of healthier food within our local communities.

Healthy food connect has been developed as a model to help communities make positive changes to their local food system.

It aims to:

create supportive environments to make healthy food choices the easy choices
improve access to a healthy food supply across all community groups and organisations, including vulnerable population groups
influence policy and develop programs to strengthen community action.

It also provides information and guidance on how to effectively influence, create and take action on local food system change.

When planning an initiative under the Healthy food connect model you should:

consider ways to increase access to healthy foods (and decrease access to unhealthy foods)
prioritise your focus on fruit and vegetables.

Figure 1 below provides further information on how to implement the Healthy food connect model and includes the following steps:

Figure 1: Overview of Healthy food connect model

To access the complete Healthy food connect resource email prevention@health.vic.gov.au

Reviewed 22 July 2022

Prevention and Population Health Branch Department of Health