Measures of the Consumer Food Store Environment: A Systematic Review of the Evidence 2000–2011

Description of the consumer food environment has proliferated in publication. However, there has been a lack of systematic reviews focusing on how the consumer food environment is associated with the following: (1) neighborhood characteristics; (2) food prices; (3) dietary patterns; and (4) weight status. We conducted a systematic review of primary, quantitative, observational studies, published in English that conducted an audit of the consumer food environment. The literature search included electronic, hand searches, and peer-reviewed from 2000 to 2011. Fifty six papers met the inclusion criteria. Six studies reported stores in low income neighborhoods or high minority neighborhoods had less availability of healthy food. While, four studies found there was no difference in availability between neighborhoods. The results were also inconsistent for differences in food prices, dietary patterns, and weight status. This systematic review uncovered several key findings. (1) Systematic measurement of determining availability of food within stores and store types is needed; (2) Context is relevant for understanding the complexities of the consumer food environment; (3) Interventions and longitudinal studies addressing purchasing habits, diet, and obesity outcomes are needed; and (4) Influences of price and marketing that may be linked with why people purchase certain items

Integration in primary community care networks (PCCNs): examination of governance, clinical, marketing, financial, and information infrastructures in a national demonstration project in Taiwan

Background. Taiwan's primary community care network (PCCN) demonstration project, funded by the Bureau of National Health Insurance on March 2003, was established to discourage hospital shopping behavior of people and drive the traditional fragmented health care providers into cooperate care models. Between 2003 and 2005, 268 PCCNs were established. This study profiled the individual members in the PCCNs to study the nature and extent to which their network infrastructures have been integrated among the members (clinics and hospitals) within individual PCCNs. Methods. The thorough questionnaire items, covering the network working infrastructures - governance, clinical, marketing, financial, and information integration in PCCNs, were developed with validity and reliability confirmed. One thousand five hundred and fifty-seven clinics that had belonged to PCCNs for more than one year, based on the 2003-2005 Taiwan Primary Community Care Network List, were surveyed by mail. Nine hundred and twenty-eight clinic members responded to the surveys giving a 59.6 % response rate. Results. Overall, the PCCNs' members had higher involvement in the governance infrastructure, which was usually viewed as the most important for establishment of core values in PCCNs' organization design and management at the early integration stage. In addition, it found that there existed a higher extent of integration of clinical, marketing, and information infrastructures among the hospital-clinic member relationship than those among clinic members within individual PCCNs. The financial infrastructure was shown the least integrated relative to other functional infrastructures at the early stage of PCCN formation. Conclusion. There was still room for better integrated partnerships, as evidenced by the great variety of relationships and differences in extent of integration in this study. In addition to provide how the network members have done for their initial work at the early stage of network forming in this study, the detailed surveyed items, the concepts proposed by the managerial and theoretical professionals, could be a guide for those health care providers who have willingness to turn their business into multi-organizations. © 2007 Lin; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.published_or_final_versio