East Birmingham food system exploration

East Birmingham is full of energy, culture, and innovative thinkers but has some of our worst health, economic, and wellbeing challenges compared to other parts of our city. This is why the East Birmingham Inclusive Growth Strategy was created with a 20 year plan on making East Birmingham a great place to grow up, to live and to work, and where people are healthy and successful.

The Food System Team identified a key opportunity to achieve these ambitions for East Birmingham is to understand the food system challenges in East Birmingham, develop and empower the citizens of East Birmingham to own the interventions taking place, and together build a healthy food economy that will see a thriving and healthy community, economy, and environment.

The Food System Team commissioned The Young Foundation to complete a community research project in East Birmingham called the East Birmingham Food System Exploration Report. The focus was on recruiting, developing, and empowering East Birmingham residents to become community researchers exploring the food offer available in their area. Peer research approach was applied to investigating the food system in East Birmingham and offers policy recommendations and ideas for future research into creating healthy food systems.

The East Birmingham Food System Exploration research aims to enhance understanding of the food system in East Birmingham with a specific focus on food businesses and the role they play in providing healthy food to their communities. We aim to understand:

• the barriers to provision of healthy affordable food that businesses experience, including cost of food, food supply, how decisions are made in businesses, and perceptions and beliefs about food
• the food system workforce, including where people are recruited from and what skills, knowledge, and training they receive
• potential gaps in skills and knowledge among food system workers in East Birmingham and how these might be filled
• key actions that can be co-produced to support food businesses to provide healthy, affordable food

The final report will be available in October 2023 and will mark the beginning of many exciting projects and interventions that we will be working on with East Birmingham citizens for East Birmingham future.

Page last updated: 29 August 2023