Updating our NOURISHING and MOVING policy tools: future-proofing for the next decade
Dr Chloe Clifford Astbury, our Senior Policy Research Manager, takes us behind the scenes to look at the team’s efforts to build tools that support evidence-informed prevention policy around the world.
The year is 2013. Macklemore and Katy Perry are on the charts. Children everywhere are about to lose their minds for Frozen. Most of the population has never even heard of a coronavirus.
In London, WCRF International’s recently established Policy & Public Affairs team has been hard at work developing the NOURISHING policy framework.
Following the success of NOURISHING, in 2018 the EU-funded CO-CREATE project enabled WCRF International to develop the MOVING policy framework and database, which outlined priority actions to promote physical activity.
Fast-forward to 2026, and we are now leading an exciting programme of work to update these tools: we envisage integrating policies on nutrition and physical activity into a single set of tools.
Alongside, we will incorporate policies on alcohol consumption and breastfeeding and infant nutrition to align with our current efforts to support population-level adherence to WCRF’s Cancer Prevention Recommendations.
As we embark on this project, we are reflecting on how our tools can drive policy action as effectively as possible.
How can our policy tools support action on prevention?
WCRF International designed the NOURISHING and MOVING tools to support our core policy aim: to help governments and policymakers around the world take effective action on preventing cancer and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
Since their publication, NOURISHING and MOVING have been cited hundreds of times in academic literature and referenced by national governments and organisations including the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Their uptake has shown how these tools can support change across the policy process.
Policy frameworks provide a suite of actions to advocate for and implement. Given our focus on prevention, our frameworks have encompassed a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach to supporting healthier populations, from retail environments, to urban planning, to marketing restrictions.
As well as providing policy options, policy frameworks can be used to monitor and benchmark policy progress. In 2023, our team used the NOURISHING and MOVING frameworks to carry out a benchmarking process in the European region, assessing progress on nutrition and physical activity in 30 countries.
By presenting the range of actions governments can take, policy frameworks provide a yardstick to identify countries’ strengths as well as priority areas for action.
The NOURISHING and MOVING frameworks were also used to guide the development of complementary policy databases. These databases catalogue real-world examples of policies from around the globe. For governments and advocates, learning from other nations’ experiences can be extremely valuable.
Consider sugar-sweetened beverage taxation, a policy measure which has now been implemented in over 100 countries, typically with the aim of reducing sugar consumption in the population.
A government looking to implement a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in their own context can learn from the example of Mexico, who implemented a flat excise tax of 1 peso per litre, or South Africa, who structured their tax based on sugar content.
They may be interested in knowing about the policy process that led to successful adoption in Chile, or how the measure impacted economic outcomes in the UK. Policy databases like NOURISHING and MOVING can help provide this information.
What’s next?
Over a decade after the launch of our first policy framework, the policy environment for prevention of cancer and other NCDs has evolved. Emerging issues such as ultra-processed foods, GLP-1s, climate change and air pollution are taking centre stage.
Governments are increasingly focused on policy integration and coherence in a bid to take effective action on complex issues. Advocates are exploring co-benefits and trade-offs with other agendas in order to build effective coalitions, particularly in the context of shrinking resources for public health.
Questions we are contemplating as we begin this project include:
- How can we best integrate a range of modifiable risk factors – nutrition, physical activity, alcohol consumption and breastfeeding – to reflect WCRF’s Cancer Prevention Recommendations?
- What types of information will be most valuable to our intended audiences, and how can we effectively mobilise these tools to support evidence-informed prevention policy?
- How should we navigate between depth and breadth in our database, weighing up the advantages of incorporating a wide range of policies from many countries, versus providing more detailed information around policy content, process and impact?
- How can we best incorporate co-benefits and trade-offs into our tools, acknowledging that actions that support cancer prevention can have synergies with agendas like climate change, health equity and mental health?
- Can our policy tools make space for and even drive innovation, as well as providing examples of precedent?
- How can we include country context in a way that helps our users understand what is likely to be feasible or effective in their own setting?
- What opportunities do AI innovations present for for expanding our coverage while maintaining the quality of our resources?
As we move forward with the next phase, we will engage experts and knowledge users in different regions and sectors to understand how we can best position these updated tools for use and take stock of the existing ecosystem of policy tools to ensure our work complements the efforts of other organisations.
If you would like to find out more about the policy framework and database update project, or see how you can get involved, please reach out to Chloe at c.cliffordastbury@wcrf.org.
