Summary
County of Los Angeles food vendors provide food or meals annually to more than 100,000 employees and millions of clients and visitors. In 2011, the County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors adopted a policy to integrate healthy nutrition standards and practices into its requests for proposals (RFPs) and contracting process with food vendors. The policy required all contracts awarded to adhere to these new standards.
In 2011, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) began reviewing RFPs for food services for county departments that procured, served, or sold food. From 2011 through 2021, DPH applied a 4-pronged formative–evaluative approach to help county departments implement the Board of Supervisors policy and ensure that nutritional requirements were appropriately integrated into all RFPs for new and renewing contracts with food vendors.
Researchers focused their evaluation on understanding the process and tracking the progress of this policy intervention. Their evaluation included 13 key informant interviews, a 2-part survey, reviews of contract data, and synthesis of lessons learned.
Findings: Based on reviews and subsequent actions taken on more than 20 RFPs, DPH successfully assisted 7 county departments to incorporate healthy nutrition standards and practices into their food vendor contracts. Implementation of the food policy encountered several challenges, including staffing and training constraints and a limited infrastructure. An iterative approach to program improvement facilitated the process.
This study uses references 2021 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) data.
