Adaptation and Validation of the Food Environment Policy Index for the German State (“Länder”) Level: An Iterative Policy Analysis with Expert Consultations

In Germany responsibilities and legislative powers within public health nutrition are diffused across multiple levels of government. Thus, this study aims to enhance the understanding of how these competencies are distributed and utilized across the different levels of government in Germany (i.e., EU, federal, state (“Länder”) and municipal level).
Using the INFORMAS Food-Environment Policy Index (Food-EPI), which has previously been applied to the federal level in Germany, we seek to adapt and validate the Food-EPI framework for evaluating food and nutrition policies and initiatives at the German state level. The focus on the state level follows the comprehensive analysis at the federal level, aiming to fill knowledge gaps and to provide detailed insights into the state-specific responsibilities and competencies within Germany’s federal system of government.
This study is designed as an iterative policy analysis based on a qualitative content analysis of relevant documents and several rounds of expert consultations. Through an in-depth document analysis and with the input from a diverse range of experts from academia, the public sector and civil society, we will develop a state-specific version of the Food-EPI, which will outline legislative powers and responsibilities as well as good practice indicators for relevant domains and indicators of the Food-EPI. We will subsequently apply the newly developed framework in future research to evaluate food environment policies in selected German states.

在德国，公共卫生营养领域的责任与立法权限分散于政府的多级机构之间。因此，本研究旨在深化对德国各级政府（即欧盟、联邦、州（Länder）和市级）间这些能力分布与运用的理解。通过运用INFORMAS食品-环境政策指数（Food-EPI），该指数先前已应用于德国联邦层面，我们旨在调整并验证Food-EPI框架，以评估德国州级层面的食品与营养政策及倡议。关注州级层面是在对联邦层面的全面分析之后进行的，旨在填补知识空白，并为德国联邦政府体系内各州的特定责任和能力提供深入的见解。本研究设计为基于相关文件定性内容分析和多轮专家咨询的迭代政策分析。通过对文件进行深入分析，并汇集来自学术界、公共部门和民间社会的多元专家意见，我们将开发Food-EPI的州级版本，该版本将概述立法权限和责任，以及相关领域和Food-EPI指标的优秀实践指标。随后，我们将将该新开发的框架应用于未来的研究，以评估德国选定州的食品环境政策。