A co-produced sustainable food-based intervention to improve nutritional health and ageing in older ethnic minority groups living in the UK

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More people in the UK are living longer but that does not mean that they have more years in good health. There are also many more people living longer from ethnic communities. However, there is a lack of relevant health and social care policies to help increase the time spent in good health and to reduce the need for health and care support.Eating a healthy well-balanced diet and staying well hydrated is an important factor to improve our health as we age. The body's ability to perform many of its functions can start to worsen more rapidly around the age of 50, and even more quickly if we do not follow a healthy lifestyle. We know that poor diet is one factor that is more likely to cause this and increase the risk of developing long term conditions in later life which impact health and quality of life. These condition problems include developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems and in certain ethnic minority groups including UK South Asian, Black Africans and Caribbeans.There are lots of other reasons why people might have a poor diet which could be because of poor education, low income and difficulty accessing food because of the current cost of living crisis, availability of traditional foods, media influences, language barriers. Therefore, we need to understand more about the factors that influence whether someone is eating well and develop new ways to help people to eat healthier. In this project we will start to understand this by undertaking an analysis of large datasets collected on the UK population including UK South Asian, Black Africans and Caribbean groups. We will work together with older people from UK South Asian, Black African and Caribbean communities. With the support of the community groups as our project partners, we will also spend time talking with people in their communities and ask them to take photographs. Using the data collected, we will work together with them to produce a new culturally tailored, adaptable toolkit with food-based recommendations, guidance and resources for older people in their communities to make better food choices, and eat a healthier diet. We will involve and engage with older people from these communities throughout this project by forming a group who will help guide the delivery of the project and sharing of the findings.Working with community groups as our project partners, we will determine the best way to share the findings with the public, such as through our regional and national networks and through a website, a short film (YouTube), newsletters, blogs and social media posts, webinars, summaries in community newsletters and work with our project partners to provide a photographic exhibition. We will co-produce a policy brief summarising key findings and policy recommendations which will be shared widely with key organisations and policymakers.