Benchmarking as a Public Health Strategy for Creating Healthy Food Environments: An Evaluation of the INFORMAS Initiative (2012–2020)

Diet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and obesity are the leading contributors to poor health worldwide. Efforts improve population diets need focus on creating healthy food environments. INFORMAS, established in 2012, is an international network that monitors benchmarks environments related policies. By 2020, INFORMAS was active 58 countries; national government policies were most frequent aspect benchmarked. has resulted development widespread application of standardized methods for assessing characteristics The activities have contributed substantially capacity building, advocacy, stakeholder engagement, policy evaluation relation Future efforts benchmark incorporate measurements environmental sustainability. For sustained impact, will be embedded within other existing monitoring initiatives. value come from repeated assessments help drive increased accountability improving