Encouraging Healthier Food and Beverage Purchasing and Consumption: A Review of Interventions within Grocery Retail Settings

This review identifies the most promising intervention strategies for promoting the purchase and consumption of healthier items within U.S. grocery retail settings, with a particular focus on those strategies that may be most effective when implemented within SNAP-authorized retail settings. Searches of nine electronic databases, as well as forward and backward searches, yielded 1942 studies. After being screened, 73 peer-reviewed academic articles were identified for inclusion. Of these, 33 analyzed single-component interventions, while 40 assessed multi-component interventions. The following unique intervention types were considered as evaluated in these studies for their ability to increase healthy item purchasing and consumption: (1) nutrition scoring, (2) nutritional messaging, (3) non-nutritional messaging, (4) endcaps and secondary placement, (5) point-of-sale interventions, (6) increased stocking, (7) food tasting and demonstrations, (8) nutrition education, and (9) placement on shelf interventions. Nutritional scoring and nutritional messaging emerged as the most rigorously tested and effective intervention strategies. Other strategies warrant more research attention. Simple intervention strategies, as opposed to complex ones, yield the most successful results and minimize shopper burden. Therefore, these strategies should be reviewed for policy implementation within SNAP-authorized grocery retailers.

Impact of Animal Characters at a Zoo Concession Stand on Healthy Food Sales

OBJECTIVE

The primary objectives of the study were to examine: 1) how increased availability of healthier items at a zoo concession stand affects sales and 2) how animal character marketing on zoo menu boards affects sales revenue.

METHODS

An intervention was conducted over an 8-week period. On alternating weeks, zoo animal characters were systematically paired with and removed from healthy food items on a zoo concession menu board. Sales and revenue data were analyzed using frequencies, a Poisson regression model, and a negative binomial regression model, respectively.

RESULTS

Newly introduced healthy items represented 8.2% of sales and 4.9% of revenue. Healthy item unit sales were significantly higher (P = .006) during the weeks animal cartoon characters were displayed, although there was no impact on revenue.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Findings suggest nonbranded character marketing is a viable strategy for promoting healthy products in family-friendly venues where concessions are sold.

Realizing Collective Impact for Community Health: A Wilmington Case Study

As our state and nation face increasingly tight program budgets and more limited funding sources, collaboration has come to the forefront as a critical mechanism to promote health and well-being. The Collective Impact framework is an emerging approach to guide larger scale changes at a community or regional level. Through the establishment of 5 core tenants including establishing a backbone organization/central infrastructure, shared agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communication the CI framework advances the work of prior theorists and creates a foundation for health promotion. In this article we discuss the foundations of the approach and describe how the tenants are applied using examples from a case study of the Wilmington Collective Community Impact Study. Finally we reflect on the evidence to date for the CI approach and offer critical points of discussion to advance community-engaged programming in a small city.

[Treatment of septic complications od secondary peritonitis]

The authors review the current management goals of surgical and antibiotic therapy in secondary peritonitis. Basic therapeutic regimen is the surgical elimination of the infectious source by means of a rational and risk-adapted operative procedure. Other technical procedures (such as intra- and postoperative lavage, drainage of the abdominal cavity, decompression, etc.) are critically reviewed and reduced to the scientific background. A calculated antibiotic therapy should be performed to eliminate the leading pathogens. The golden standard seems to be the short-term application of a third generation cephalosporin in combination with metronidazole. Antibiotic-induced endotoxinemia, bacterial shifting to grampositive species, and escalating antibiotic resistance require the examination of new therapeutic regimens (e.g. with quinolones).