Background. Community-based interventions are needed to reduce the burden of childhood obesity.Purpose. To evaluate the impact of a multi-level promot

Disparities in dietary behaviors have been directly linked to the food environment, including access to retail food outlets. The Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to major changes in the distribution, sale, purchase, preparation, and consumption of food in the United States (US). This paper reflects on those changes and provides recommendations for research to understand the impact of the pandemic on the retail food environment (RFE) and consumer behavior. Using the Retail Food Environment and Customer Interaction Model, we describe the impact of COVID-19 in four key areas: (1) community, state, tribal, and federal policy; (2) retail actors, business models, and sources; (3) customer experiences; and (4) dietary intake. We discuss how previously existing vulnerabilities and inequalities based on race, ethnicity, class, and geographic location were worsened by the pandemic. We recommend approaches for building a more just and equitable RFE, including understanding the impacts of changing shopping behaviors and adaptations to federal nutrition assistance as well as how small food business can be made more sustainable. By better understanding the RFE adaptations that have characterized the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope to gain greater insight into how our food system can become more resilient in the future.

Food purchasing and consumption behaviors have implications for nutrition and obesity. Food retail environments, in particular, shape customer food choices and energy intake. The marketing literature offers insights about how public health practitioners can work within food retail environments to encourage healthy food choices. We reviewed experimental studies in the marketing literature to examine factors influencing customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail stores. Database searches were conducted in February 2016 for original, empirical articles published in English from 2000–2015 in marketing journals. Each research article included at least one experimental design study conducted in a real or simulated retail environment with purchase intentions or choice of food products as an outcome variable. Backward and forward reference searches were conducted for articles meeting inclusion criteria. Narrative synthesis methods were used to thematically group and summarize the findings of forty-one articles that met inclusion criteria into three categories: shelf display and product factors, pricing and price promotion factors, and in-store and customer decision-making factors. This research contributes to the literature by providing specific and actionable approaches that can increase/decrease customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail environments. Translating marketing strategies into public health applications can provide recommendations for future intervention research and policy related to customer food purchasing behavior.

Background: The past decade of research has seen theoretical and methodological advances in both implementation science and health equity research, opening a window of opportunity for facilitating and accelerating cross-disciplinary exchanges across these fields that have largely operated in siloes. In 2019 and 2020, the National Cancer Institute’s Consortium for Cancer Implementation Science convened an action group focused on ‘health equity and context’ to identify opportunities to advance implementation science. In this paper, we present a narrative review and synthesis of the relevant literature at the intersection of health equity and implementation science, highlight identified opportunities (i.e., public goods) by the action group for advancing implementation science in cancer prevention and control, and integrate the two by providing key recommendations for future directions. Discussion: In the review and synthesis of the literature, we highlight recent advances in implementation science, relevant to promoting health equity (e.g., theories/models/frameworks, adaptations, implementation strategies, study designs, implementation determinants, and outcomes). We acknowledge the contributions from the broader field of health equity research and discuss opportunities for integration and synergy with implementation science, which include (1) articulating an explicit focus on health equity for conducting and reviewing implementation science; (2) promoting an explicit focus on health equity in the theories, models, and frameworks guiding implementation science; and (3) identifying methods for understanding and documenting influences on the context of implementation that incorporate a focus on equity. Summary: To advance the science of implementation with a focus on health equity, we reflect on the essential groundwork needed to promote bi-directional learning between the fields of implementation science and health equity research and recommend (1) building capacity among researchers and research institutions for health equity-focused and community-engaged implementation science; (2) incorporating health equity considerations across all key implementation focus areas (e.g., adaptations, implementation strategies, study design, determinants, and outcomes); and (3) continuing a focus on transdisciplinary opportunities in health equity research and implementation science. We believe that these recommendations can help advance implementation science by incorporating an explicit focus on health equity in the context of cancer prevention and control and beyond.

The retail food environment (RFE) has important implications for dietary intake and health, and dramatic changes in RFEs have been observed over the past few decades and years. Prior conceptual models of the RFE and its relationships with health and behavior have played an important role in guiding research; yet, the convergence of RFE changes and scientific advances in the field suggest the time is ripe to revisit this conceptualization. In this paper, we propose the Retail Food Environment and Customer Interaction Model to convey the evolving variety of factors and relationships that convene to influence food choice at the point of purchase. The model details specific components of the RFE, including business approaches, actors, sources, and the customer retail experience; describes individual, interpersonal, and household characteristics that affect customer purchasing; highlights the macro-level contexts (e.g., communities and nations) in which the RFE and customers behave; and addresses the wide-ranging outcomes produced by RFEs and customers, including: population health, food security, food justice, environmental sustainability, and business sustainability. We believe the proposed conceptualization helps to (1) provide broad implications for future research and (2) further highlight the need for transdisciplinary collaborations to ultimately improve a range of critical population outcomes.

Healthcare settings and systems have been slow to adopt and implement many effective cancer prevention and control interventions. Understanding the factors that determine successful implementation is essential to accelerating the translation of effective interventions into practice. Many scholars have studied the determinants of implementation, and much of this research has been guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). The CFIR categorizes implementation determinants at five levels (characteristics of the intervention, inner setting, individual, processes, and outer setting). Of these five levels, determinants at the level of the outer setting are the least developed. Extensive research in fields other than healthcare suggest that determinants at the level of the outer setting (e.g., funding streams, contracting practices, and public policy) play a central role in shaping when and how an organization implements new structures and practices. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of outer-setting determinants is critical to efforts to accelerate the implementation of effective cancer control interventions. The Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) created a cross-center workgroup to review organizational theories and begin to contribute to the creation of a future framework of constructs related to outer setting determinants. In this paper, we report findings from the review of three organizational theories: Institutional Theory, Transaction Cost Economics, and Contingency Theory. To demonstrate the applicability of this work to implementation science and practice, we have applied findings to three case studies of CPCRN researchers' efforts to implement colorectal cancer screening interventions in Federally Qualified Health Centers.