Systems thinking workshop: East Sussex food environments

Client: East Sussex County Council

Project type: Systems thinking workshop

Project partner: OURI Labs 

Location: Online

What was the project?

How do we enable healthier food choices across our towns and neighbourhoods – not just through individual decisions, but by designing places that make the healthy choice the easy one?

That’s the challenge we helped East Sussex County Council explore, through a pilot workshop that brought together local authority teams to take a ‘whole-systems’ approach to creating healthy food environments.

Working with OURI Labs and the East Sussex Creating Healthy Places Team, we co-designed and facilitated an interactive workshop aimed at supporting teams across a two-tier council structure to collaborate more effectively on this complex issue.

The focus was on food environments, but the learning reached much further, helping to break down silos and support joined-up thinking around health, place and policy.

Why this, and why now?

Local authorities are increasingly recognising the impact of the built environment on our health. From the concentration of fast-food outlets near schools to a lack of access to fresh produce, food environments play a huge role in shaping long-term health outcomes.

The East Sussex team wanted to better understand the policy levers available, how to use local data effectively, and how to develop a consistent approach to regulating hot food takeaways in a way that supports healthy weight and nutrition for all.

What we delivered

The online workshop brought together a wide range of stakeholders from across planning, public health, policy and environmental health. Participants used systems-mapping tools to explore how their services intersect, what change is possible, and how they can work together to embed health in all policies.

What was the impact?

  • A strategic action plan for East Sussex County Council
  • A stronger shared understanding of the role of local policy in shaping food environments
  • Clarity on the opportunities available to different services to support public health
  • New cross-sector connections to support ongoing collaboration

The workshop supported a mindset shift — from tackling obesity in isolation to building places that enable health and wellbeing in a broader, more equitable way.

What did they say?

“The power of external facilitation has been key. It has been invaluable in helping us navigate and determine how we can better ‘have the conversation’, join up, improve our system dynamics, and create positive change to achieve our mutual priorities and policy objectives.” – Lourdes Madigasekera-Elliot, Public Health Strategic Lead, East Sussex County Council