The UK Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) (announced in March 2016; implemented in April 2018) aims to incentivise reformulation of soft drinks to reduce added sugar levels. The SDIL has been applauded as a policy success, and it has survived calls from parliamentarians for it to be repealed. We aimed to explore parliamentary reaction to the SDIL following its announcement until two years post-implementation in order to understand how health policy can become established and resilient to opposition.

Searches of Hansard for parliamentary debate transcripts that discussed the SDIL retrieved 186 transcripts, with 160 included after screening. Five stages of Applied Thematic Analysis were conducted: familiarisation and creation of initial codebooks; independent second coding; codebook finalisation through team consensus; final coding of the dataset to the complete codebook; and theme finalisation through team consensus.

The United Kingdom Parliament

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Between the announcement (16/03/2016) – royal assent (26/04/2017), two themes were identified 1: SDIL welcomed cross-party 2: SDIL a good start but not enough. Between royal assent – implementation (5/04/2018), one theme was identified 3: The SDIL worked – what next? The final theme identified from implementation until 16/03/2020 was 4: Moving on from the SDIL.

After the announcement, the SDIL had cross-party support and was recognised to have encouraged reformulation prior to implementation. Lessons for governments indicate that the combination of cross-party support and a policy’s documented success in achieving its aim can help cement the resilience of it to opposition and threats of repeal.

Early-stage clinical and translational researchers who set and track career goals, milestones, and progress are successful in career development. We aimed to determine the effectiveness of the Customized Career Development Platform (CCDP), an online individual development plan (IDP), versus the traditional IDP template in improving research success and career satisfaction.

We conducted a pragmatic cluster-randomized controlled trial of 340 scholars and trainees at 27 US academic healthcare institutions. The primary outcome was number of published manuscripts 24 months post-intervention. Secondary outcomes included the number of grant proposals submitted and funded, job satisfaction, and level of communication with mentors. An analysis of CCDP participants assessed proficiency level for the 14 Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) competencies. Data were analyzed using intention-to-treat.

Participants were mostly female (60.3%) and Caucasian (67.2%); mean age was 34 years. Twenty-four months following the intervention, the CCDP versus traditional IDP groups showed a similar number of publications (9.4 vs 8.6), grants submitted (4.1 vs 4.4) and funded (1.3 vs 2.0), and job satisfaction score (3.6 vs 3.7). The CCDP group had higher odds of discussing communication (OR = 2.08) and leadership skills (OR = 2.62) and broadening their network (2.31) than the traditional IDP group. The CCDP arm reported improvements in 9 of the 14 CTSA competencies.

The CCDP offers CTSA hubs an innovative alternative to traditional IDP tools. Future studies are needed to elucidate why the CCDP users did not fully appreciate or adopt the functionality of the online platform.

To evaluate the impact of increased availability of healthier options on purchasing of different types of vending snack products sold in English leisure (sports) centres.

An evaluation of an intervention using pre-post methods and interrupted time series analysis. Products within the vending machines were altered over three phases to increase the availability of healthier options, using agreed nutrition criteria – Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services (GBSF) for England – as a guide, as well as product availability. The primary outcome was the change in mean weekly purchased energy between the first and third phase. Secondary outcomes included changes by phase and by week in weekly number of purchases, fats, sugars and salt for all products combined and by individual product categories.

Fifteen sports centres in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK.

Snack products sold in eighteen vending machines.

Energy purchased reduced from baseline to phase 2, for all product categories combined, by 47·25 MJ (95 % CI (−61·22, −33·27)) per machine and by 279 kJ, (95 % CI (−325, −266)) per product unit. There were reductions in most nutrients purchased in all individual product categories except chocolate confectionery. Nutrients per product unit decreased for all product categories except saturated fat in chocolate confectionery. Minimal underlying trends in the baseline phase were identified, indicating changes in outcomes were likely to be due to the intervention.

Introducing standards to increase availability of healthier snack products in vending machines is feasible without substantially affecting sales.

The present study examined the effect of ingredient bundles (i.e. measured ingredients with recipes) and recipe tastings as a strategy to increase the selection of healthy, target foods (kale, brown rice and whole-wheat pasta).

Each of the three conditions was tested once per week for three weeks. The conditions were: Treatment 1 (T1), recipe tastings only; Treatment 2 (T2), ingredient bundle plus recipe tastings; and Control, no intervention.

A food pantry in Bridgeport, CT, USA.

Food pantry clients.

Controlling for family size and intervention week, the likelihood of clients in T2 (n 160) selecting at least one target item compared with the Control group (n 160) was 3·20 times higher for kale, 4·76 times higher for brown rice and 7·25 times higher for whole-wheat pasta. Compared with T1 (n 128), T2 clients were 2·67 times more likely to select kale, 7·67 times more likely to select brown rice and 11·43 times more likely to select whole-wheat pasta. No differences between T1 and the Control group were found.

Findings suggest that innovative, nudging strategies such as ingredient bundles may increase appeal of foods and encourage pantry clients to select healthier options.