Virginia independent food retailer perceptions of their role in planetary health promotion

Abstract

Healthy food retail initiatives have been common approaches to promote nutrition security in the U.S.; however, they have under-emphasized planetary health promotion, despite the close connections of healthy earth systems to ensuring nutrition security. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of independent food retail owners and managers about their role in planetary health promotion, identify potential planetary health promotion practices, and describe barriers and facilita tors to implementation. Twelve semi-structured interviews, informed by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) 2.0, were conducted with independent groceries, cooperatives, and on-farm store members of Virginia Fresh Match, a statewide fruit and vegetable incentive food retailer network. Descriptive inductive codes and a priori barrier and facilitator codes from CFIR constructs were used by two independent coders to describe and categorize the data. Results showed that retailers had a range of interest in planetary health promotion, with cooperatives including planetary health in all business decisions, farm stores primarily focusing on agricultural practices, and grocers most interested in those practices that aligned with profit potential and customer expectations. Among all retailers, amenability to planetary health practices varied by community context. Planetary health practices included: agricultural practices of suppliers, bulk offerings, energy usage, food miles, local foods, animal source protein reduction, and waste reduction. Profit potential and alignment with customer expectations were the most important consideration for retailers to implement any planetary health practice and were barriers and facilitators depending on practice and community context. Partnerships and other external supports were identified as facilitators for planetary health promotion. The results can inform future research that investigates differences in retailer-preferred practices across contexts, explorations of how to frame planetary health messages to align with customer expectations, and tailoring of implementation strategies.