European Food Information Council (EUFIC) and Caritas Trieste in Italy conducted joint research and developed evidence-based recommendations for “Facilitating the Healthy and Sustainable Diet Shift through Effective Communication in Communities with Low Socioeconomic Status”.
Consumers with low socioeconomic status (SES) face unique challenges that limit their uptake of healthy & sustainable eating (e.g., reduced affordability, accessibility, and availability of healthy & sustainable foods). The reduced exposure to, seeking of, and trust in health information that has been observed in consumers with low SES further reinforce these challenges.
This toolkit presents evidence-based recommendations on how to tailor your communication to consumers with low SES to empower them to shift towards healthier & more sustainable diets. The recommendations were developed based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research findings.
Focus groups with social supermarket beneficiaries and professionals of the Caritas Trieste charitable foundation in Italy provided insights into the barriers and communication preferences of consumers with low SES with regard to healthy & sustainable eating. Based on these insights, tailored communication material (i.e., infographics) was developed and tested in a larger pool of consumers with low SES via an online survey.
This toolkit of recommendations is particularly relevant for science communicators, researchers, health professionals, journalists, NGOs, and policymakers who work with communities with low SES.
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