News
UCC have completed their Group Model Building Sessions for FOODPATH
The FOODPATH team at UCC has conducted Group Model Building sessions in Cork city. Focusing on the southwest of the city, including the neighbourhoods of Togher, Ballyphehane, Greenmount, Deerpark and the Lough.
All the members of the School of Public Health Food Policy Research Team contributed to the planning and implementation of the workshops. Current MPH student Nora O’Connor, who is researching the GMB process for her masters’ thesis, also played a key role in researching and planning the workshops.
We held workshops with residents of the community, and with people who work in health- and nutrition-related roles in the community. The goal of the workshops was to work with both these groups of participants, first separately, then together, to build a system map of the food environment in this area of the city, using a process called Group Model Building. We based our sessions on the template established by our FOODPATH colleagues at Wageningen University, who adapted this process to map food environments and, specifically, to identify inequities and leverage points for change.
The sessions were truly insightful and constructive, and we are very grateful to the participants who shared their time and knowledge so generously with us. We look forward to sharing the map they built, and comparing it to that built by the communities in the Netherlands, Poland, and Belgium.
The leverage points for change and possible actions identified by our participants will also feed into the City Food Strategy which is currently being developed by the Cork Food Policy Council.