Projects

Historical and Epidemiological Transitions in Urban Caribbean Foodscapes: Understanding the Past to Enhance Future Healthy Eating

Understanding historical and epidemiological transitions in urban Caribbean foodscapes to enhance future healthy eating.

Aim

The project aimed to develop transdisciplinary partnerships between historians, public health researchers and social scientists to understand historical and epidemiological transformations in two neighbouring but contrasting cities, Kingston (Jamaica) and Port-au-Prince (Haiti), to be able to identify the ways cities in low and middle income countries impact on their populations' food practices, opportunities and in turn health.

Activities

We explored underlying mechanisms that have led to both 'unhealthy' spaces (e.g. fast food dense neighbourhoods) or 'healthy' spaces (e.g. urban gardens). By investigating how these social, political and economic determinants of nutrition have developed and shaped into contemporary foodscapes, the goal of our project was to inform the prevention of chronic diseases by enhancing healthy eating strategies.  

Outcomes

Historical findings include the increasing popularisation of commercial, more quickly prepared meals between the 1950s and 1970s; a national campaign to promote locally produced food crops in the diet to address food scarcity in the late 1970s; and the proliferation of United States fast food chains in Kingston in the 1980s.

The health data review found thirteen relevant health or nutrition surveys on malnutrition including childhood stunting rates, nutrient deficiency and obesity rates. Few predate the 1980s and many only offer national (versus city level) data. Annual health and demographic reports pre- and post-independence in 1962 might be able to fill data gaps.

For the geographical information systems map, we had to identify relevant historical address points, as well as identify and digitalise historical maps from 1945 onwards onto which data can be layered.

Outputs

Guell C, Altink H, Moore M, McMorris M, Morrissey K, Smith M, Unwin N, Williams A, Govia I. An interdisciplinary study of historical and epidemiological transitions in urban Caribbean foodscapes: understanding the past to enhance future nutrition strategies. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2019; 73. (Suppl 1), A78-A79. DOI: 10.1136/jech-2019-SSMabstracts.167
[oral presentation at Society for Social Medicine Annual Meeting, Exeter]

This partnership building project led to several new projects, including its follow-up study “Transdisciplinary data assemblages for a socio-historical understanding of the formation of Caribbean food systems” [AH/T00407X/1]