Development of a Tool for Reporting Key Dietary Indicators from Sales Data in Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Stores

Emma McMahon; Megan Ferguson; Thomas Wycherley; Anthony Gunther; Julie Brimblecombe

doi:10.3390/nu16071058

Development of a Tool for Reporting Key Dietary Indicators from Sales Data in Remote Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Stores

Nutrients. 2024 Apr 4;16(7):1058. doi: 10.3390/nu16071058.

Authors

Emma McMahon^{1

2}, Megan Ferguson^{1

2

3}, Thomas Wycherley⁴, Anthony Gunther¹, Julie Brimblecombe^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Wellbeing and Preventable Chronic Disease Division, Menzies School of Health Research, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT 0810, Australia.
² Department of Nutrition, Dietetics & Food, Monash University, Notting Hill, VIC 3168, Australia.
³ School of Public Health, University of Queensland, Herston, QLD 4006, Australia.
⁴ Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.

Abstract

Reporting key dietary indicators from sales data can help us guide store decision makers in developing effective store policy to support healthier customer purchases. We aimed to develop a web-based reporting tool of key dietary indicators from sales data to support health-promoting policy and practice in stores in geographically remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Tool development included identifying key dietary indicators (informed by sales data from 31 stores), community consultation (19 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander store directors and two store managers) and a web-build. Tool evaluation involved feedback interviews with stakeholders (25 store managers and two nutritionists). Key dietary indicators aligned with Australian Dietary Guideline food groupings and recommendations. An online portal for accessing and customising reports was built. Stakeholder feedback indicated that the strengths of the reports were the visuals, ease of interpretation, providing information that was not currently available and potential to increase capacity to support healthy food retailing. Difficulties were defining healthiness classification with alignment to other nutrition guidelines used and ensuring reports reached relevant store decision makers. This tool may be valuable to support store decision makers in identifying and prioritising nutrition issues and optimising the health-enabling attributes of stores.

Keywords: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander; dietary assessment; dietary indicators; food retail; information systems; nutrition; sales data.

MeSH terms

Australia
Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples*
Commerce
Diet*
Health Policy
Humans

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Commonwealth of Australia. E.M. was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and National Heart Foundation of Australia Early Career Fellowship (1120639; 2017–2020) and NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence Grant (CRE-REFRESH; 1152968; 2021–2023). JB is supported by a National Heart Foundation of Australia Future Leader Fellowship (100085; 2014–2017) and an NHMRC Investigator Fellowship (2017170; 2023–2027). The information and opinions contained in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the funding bodies.