The role of european national health services in the enhancement of sustainable food systems
The European food systems are unsustainable, within a Europe confronting increased environmental degradation, diet related diseases and inequality. Healthcare systems have the capacity to influence the current status quo of food systems towards sustainable means. However, sustainable food system policies are recent and yet poorly implemented within the European health Services. A lack of assessment and target setting for decision making do not ease up the process. The objective of the present proposal is to explore the food system processes related with the economic and educative channels of the European health services from a sustainable dimension and to develop the first System of Indicators that will aid up in the decision making of those processes. The (co-)generation process of the System of Indicators will be via qualitative methodology. A transdisciplinary approach will be used when using the DELPHI methodology and the panel of expert for the theoretical validation of the System of Indicator. A practical phase will also be carried out to validate the System of Indicators against real cases. Additionally, during a secondment phase, we are going to lead the process of the development of a territorial strategy on food systems in health-care within the Basque region, bridging the research into policy making through participatory-action research. The knowledge obtained in this project will be used to develop strategies to target more efficiently the sustainable goals of the United Nations 2030 agenda in Europe. The Fellow will be up-skilled (in new research skills and techniques) to advance in the development of a career path towards sustainable science, to translate her background knowledge into a continuing research environment and to build and maintain links with other researchers in sustainable food policy throughout Europe aiming to contribute to policy making and developmental strategies towards sustainable societies.