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Supervisor:
Oliver Mytton and Mario Cortina Borja
Project Description:
Background
Price promotions (e.g. buy one get one free, get 50% extra free) on less-healthy foods have been identified as an important driver of excess food consumption. Adolescents and children are particularly susceptible to promotional activities. Restricting price promotions, or certain types of price promotions, has been proposed as one measure to tackle child obesity and improve children’s health.
The evidence base of their impact and wider questions relevant to policy implementation is currently very limited, which has hindered implementation.
We are applying to NIHR for a two-year grant to evaluate the impact of two voluntary polices (Sainsbury’s, 2016; Tesco, 2022) to stop using price promotions to sell unhealthy food. Subject to funding, there will be a PhD opportunity to focus on the health and economic implications of this policy on children, adolescents and their families, as part of this larger study.
Aims/Objectives
1. Synthesize the existing evidence on the impact of price promotions on consumption patterns, for families and young people.
2. Contribute new evidence to inform the development and implementation of policies to restrict the introduction of price promotions with a focus on the implications for children, adolescents and their families
3. Develop broad skills in public health research and data science, including the use of evidence to inform policy development.
Methods
The PhD will consist of three or four discrete pieces of work that will contribute different forms of evidence and use different methods, e.g.:
1. A systematic review of existing studies that quantify the impact of price promotions on the sale of less-healthy foods to children and adolescents.
2. Quantitative analyses (using a difference-in-difference analysis) to estimate the impact of supermarket voluntary commitment to eliminate ‘volume-driver’ promotions in 2016, using either Kantar Panel data or consumer loyalty card data. This project will be in collaboration with the Institute for Fiscal studies and/or University of East Anglia, who hold the datasets.
3. Using the PRIMEtime model to simulate the potential impact of restrictions on price promotions, via changes in calorie intake, on children’s health.
4. Use established UK child health cohort studies (e.g. Southampton Women’s study, Born in Bradford) to quantify, using regression analyses, the association between less-healthy food items and children’s health
5. Focus groups and/or interviews with young people and parents to seek their views on the use of price promotions and policy proposals.
Timeline
0-3 months: orientation and background reading
3-12 months: systematic review (develop and register protocol, undertake review, synthesize findings, write-up)
13-21 months: project 2 (develop protocol, data cleaning/collection/analysis, write-up)
22-30 months: project 3 (develop protocol, data cleaning/collection/analysis, write-up)
31-36 months: Synthesis and writing-up the PhD thesis
References
1. Nakamura, R. et al. Price promotions on healthier compared with less healthy foods:
hierarchical regression analysis of the impact on sales in Great Britain. Am. J. Clin. Nutr,
2015.
2. Mytton, O. et al. The potential impact of restricting less-healthy food and beverage advertising on UK television. PLOS Medicine, 2020.
3. Childhood obesity: a plan for action – Chapter 2. HM Government, 2018.
Contact Information:
Oliver Mytton