1St Africa Food Environment Research Network (FERN) meeting held Nov 3-5, 2020

The MEALS4NCDs Project, presently being implemented by the University of Ghana, in collaboration with the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Kenya, National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), France, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Scientific Institute of Public Health (Sciensano), Belgium, has successfully hosted the First Africa Food Environment Research Network Meeting (FERN2020). This 3-day virtual meeting, the first of its kind in Africa, had the theme “Connecting Food Environment Researchers across Africa”. The FERN initiative is a capacity-building aspect of the MEALS4NCDs Project which seeks to measure and support public sector actions that create healthy food marketing and food provisioning environments for children and adolescents in Ghana, to prevent obesity and other diet-related NCDs. Among others, the FERN initiative aims to kindle a collaborative environment and a cross-pollination of ideas towards creating healthier food environments in the African sub-region. 

During the 3-day event, 26 distinguished speakers from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America with diverse expertise in food environment research engaged FERN delegates. Participants were informed in detail about some existing research methods/approaches. Both Speakers and participants shared experiences, challenges and opportunities to push the boundaries of translational research on food environments and related policy in Africa.  Specifically, the programme covered:

i. Launch of the Africa FERN Initiative.ii. Capacity building on two approaches developed by the International Network for Food and

Obesity NCDs Research Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS)

a. Healthy Food Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI) Module

b. Food Prices  Module

iii. Deliberative development of Food Environment Research

AcknowledgementsThe FERN Meeting/the MEALS4NCDs Project is funded by The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Food, Environment, and Health Program—IDRC, Canada, and implemented by a core team of investigators.