Developments in the UK: work of the Low Income Project Team.

The Health of the Nation document published in 1992 (Department of Health, 1992) set in place a comprehensive strategy for promoting public health across the whole community. Of the priority key areas (coronary heart disease and stroke, cancers, mental and sexual health, and accidents) heart disease, stroke and cancers have a clear nutritional component. Specific targets were set in relation to dietary objectives. The Nutrition Task Force (NTF) was established to prepare an action programme aimed at achieving the dietary targets, and its first report, Eat Well, was published in 1994 (Department of Health, 1994). The NTF recognized that people on low incomes may experience particular difficulties in constructing a healthy and varied diet in line with Health of the Nation targets. (Dowler & Dobson (1997) in the present symposium have described the extent of the problem and its consequences in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.) The NTF established the Low Income Project Team (LIFT) to collate and disseminate examples of good local practice which might enable those on low income to ensure that they eat a healthy diet. The terms of reference of the LIFT were to collate examples of effective coping strategies and good local practice, to consider how to evaluate them, and to make recommendations concerning the best ways to improve access to healthy diets for low-income households. It was not within the remit of the LIPT to discuss the adequacy of benefit levels. One consequence of this restriction was to focus the Project Team’s efforts on policy initiatives to improve dietary health in low-income households.