Understanding how healthcare providers build consumer trust in the Australian food system: A qualitative study.

Aim: This study aimed to identify how dietitians and other healthcare providers work to build trust in food systems in the course of providing dietary education.

Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 purposefully sampled dietitians (n = 5), general practitioners (n = 5), and complementary and alternative medicine practitioners (n = 5) within metropolitan South Australia. Interview data were then interpreted using an inductive thematic analysis approach, involving the construction of themes representing trust-enhancing roles around which beliefs about professional roles, the 'patient', and food and health were clustered.

Testing delay in an environment of low COVID-19 prevalence: A qualitative study of testing behaviour amongst symptomatic South Australians.

Introduction: South Australia has to date (October 2021) been highly successful in maintaining an aggressive suppression strategy for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, continued success of this strategy is dependent on ongoing testing by people with symptoms of COVID-19 to identify, trace and quarantine emergent cases as soon as possible. This study sought to explore community members' decisions about having COVID-19 testing in an environment of low prevalence, specifically exploring their decision-making related to symptoms.

The health implications of distrust in the food system: findings from the dimensions of trust in food systems scale (DOTIFS scale).

Background: Consumer trust in food systems is essential for consumers, food industry, policy makers and regulators. Yet no comprehensive tool for measuring consumer trust in food systems exists. Similarly, the impact that trust in the food system has on health-related food behaviours is yet to be empirically examined.

Working together in Aboriginal health: a framework to guide health professional practice.

Background: Working effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is important for maximising the effectiveness of a health care interaction between and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and a health professional. This paper presents a framework to guide health professional practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

Methods: This qualitative study was based in a social constructionist epistemology and was guided by a critical social research methodology.

Cross-country comparison of strategies for building consumer trust in food.

Consumer trust in the modern food system is essential given its complexity. Contexts vary across countries with regard to food incidents, regulation and systems. It is therefore of interest to compare how key actors in different countries might approach (re)building consumer trust in the food system; and particularly relevant to understanding how food systems in different regions might learn from one another.

Supporting dietitians to work in Aboriginal health: Qualitative evaluation of a Community of Practice mentoring circle.

Aim: This paper explores the experience of dietitians participating in a Community of Practice designed to support their work with Aboriginal communities.

Methods: The Community of Practice for dietitians working with Aboriginal communities ran for 12 months, starting in May 2014. Six-weekly mentoring sessions were held using Skype, with conversation aided by a facilitator.

In the interest of food safety: a qualitative study investigating communication and trust between food regulators and food industry in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Background: Food regulatory bodies play an important role in public health, and in reducing the costs of food borne illness that are absorbed by both industry and government. Regulation in the food industry involves a relationship between regulators and members of the industry, and it is imperative that these relationships are built on trust. Research has shown in a variety of contexts that businesses find the most success when there are high levels of trust between them and their key stakeholders.

Obtaining consumer perspectives using a citizens' jury: does the current country of origin labelling in Australia allow for informed food choices?

Background: Contemporary food systems are vast and complex, creating greater distance between consumers and their food. Consequently, consumers are required to put faith in a system of which they have limited knowledge or control. Country of origin labelling (CoOL) is one mechanism that theoretically enables consumer knowledge of provenance of food products.

Working at the interface in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health: focussing on the individual health professional and their organisation as a means to address health equity.

Background: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience inequity in health outcomes in Australia. Health care interactions are an important starting place to seek to address this inequity. The majority of health professionals in Australia do not identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people and the health care interaction therefore becomes an example of working in an intercultural space (or interface).

Managing uncertainty about food risks - Consumer use of food labelling.

General consumer knowledge of and engagement with the production of food has declined resulting in increasing consumer uncertainty about, and sensitivity to, food risks. Emphasis is therefore placed on providing information for consumers to reduce information asymmetry regarding food risks, particularly through food labelling. This study examines the role of food labelling in influencing consumer perceptions of food risks.

A model for (re)building consumer trust in the food system.

The article presents a best practice model that can be utilized by food system actors to assist with (re)building trust in the food system, before, during and after a food incident defined as 'any situation within the food supply chain where there is a risk or potential risk of illness or confirmed illness or injury associated with the consumption of a food or foods' (Commonwealth of Australia. National Food Incident Response Protocol. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2012).

Consumer trust in the Australian food system - The everyday erosive impact of food labelling.

Consumer trust in food system actors is foundational for ensuring consumer confidence in food safety. As food labelling is a direct communication between consumers and food system actors, it may influence consumer perceptions of actor trustworthiness. This study explores the judgements formed about the trustworthiness of the food system and its actors through labelling, and the expectations these judgements are based on.

Attitudes and characteristics of health professionals working in Aboriginal health.

Introduction: There is an unacceptable gap in health status between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Australia. Linked to social inequalities in health and political and historical marginalisation, this health gap must be urgently addressed. It is important that health professionals, the majority of whom in Australia are non-Aboriginal, are confident and equipped to work in Aboriginal health in order to contribute towards closing the health gap.

Media actors' perceptions of their roles in reporting food incidents.

Background: Previous research has shown that the media can play a role in shaping consumer perceptions during a public health crisis. In order for public health professionals to communicate well-informed health information to the media, it is important that they understand how media view their role in transmitting public health information to consumers and decide what information to present. This paper reports the perceptions of media actors from three countries about their role in reporting information during a food incident.

The challenges of quantitative evaluation of a multi-setting, multi-strategy community-based childhood obesity prevention programme: lessons learnt from the eat well be active Community Programs in South Australia.

Objective: To describe the rationale, development and implementation of the quantitative component of evaluation of a multi-setting, multi-strategy, community-based childhood obesity prevention project (the eat well be active (ewba) Community Programs) and the challenges associated with this process and some potential solutions.

Design: ewba has a quasi-experimental design with intervention and comparison communities. Baseline data were collected in 2006 and post-intervention measures will be taken from a non-matched cohort in 2009.

Reliability and relative validity of a child nutrition questionnaire to simultaneously assess dietary patterns associated with positive energy balance and food behaviours, attitudes, knowledge and environments associated with healthy eating.

Background: Food behaviours, attitudes, environments and knowledge are relevant to professionals in childhood obesity prevention, as are dietary patterns which promote positive energy balance. There is a lack of valid and reliable tools to measure these parameters. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability and relative validity of a child nutrition questionnaire assessing all of these parameters, used in the evaluation of a community-based childhood obesity prevention project.