DUNCAN STEPHENSON

Campaigns, Policy and Communications

CAMPAIGN :

Health on the High Street

How many fast food takeaways and betting shops are on your local high street? And what impact does the 'clustering' of businesses such as these have on the health of local residents?

With these questions in mind, I created a campaign called 'Health on the High Street' - which aimed to raise awareness of the impact of businesses on community health and wellbeing.

In collaboration with experts, my team developed a methodology to score the healthiness of different types of shops, depending on whether they promoted healthy choices, supported community cohesion, improved wellbeing or helped provide access to health services. This formed the basis of a League Table and, in turn, the 'Health on the High Street' report.

IMAGE : Health on the High Street report cover.

PROJECT :

High Streets League Table and Report

I developed a “Richter Scale of Health” to measure the healthiness of different types of shops, so a fast food takeaway would score negatively, but a gym or leisure centre would score positively. We then ranked the towns and cities of the UK based on the total number of different healthy/unhealthy shops on each of the main high streets. We published a Healthy High Streets league table in a report along with policy recommendations.

Campaign Results :

COVERAGE - The reaction was overwhelming – the report dominated the news agenda and the public interest in the campaign led to the RSPH website crashing under the volume of people trying to access it!

ADVOCACY - I used the report to campaign for a number of policy changes - including calling for a reduction in the maximum stake permitted on the Fixed Odds Betting Machines found in betting shops. This measure was adopted and has since had a significant impact on reducing gambling harms and money lost, often by some of the most vulnerable people in society.

PARTNERSHIPS - The campaign also led to a number of partnerships. Most notably this included a major international partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), who we worked with on an international adaptation. The partnership also allowed me to repeat the Health on the High Street research in 2018.

Media Coverage (examples) :

The campaign was covered in quite some depth by all of the main national news programmes and publications across the UK. News coverage of the report even featured in a segment on the very popular Channel 4 series, Gogglebox (see below). It also attracted a significant amount of local media attention – particularly in the highlighted regions - and was covered internationally too.