Authors' objectives: In his 2016 budget, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a levy on sugary drinks to be introduced in April 2018. This will fall on drinks manufacturers and will be higher for drinks with more sugar. The levy aims to encourage manufacturers to reduce the sugar in their drinks, and consumers to reduce the number of sugary drinks they consume. Money raised will be spent on primary school breakfast clubs, sports and extended hours. This is a complicated and complex intervention with many potential effects. They might include changes in: what drinks are available, how they are marketed, and their price availability, marketing and price of other food and drink products public attitudes to sugary drinks and other products sales and consumption of sugary drinks and other products drinks manufacturers profits and the number of people they employ children s physical activity overall dental and wider health The effects of the levy may also vary for different groups of people. For example, children and those on lower incomes may be more affected by price changes; women may be more likely to work in drinks manufacturing and so be more susceptible to job losses. We plan to study these wide-ranging effects, focusing particularly on the pathways and effects most relevant to health. This will allow us to build up a complete picture of whether, how, why and in whom the sugary drinks levy has health-related effects. Before we conduct this large study, we need to do some preparatory groundwork. This will have three parts: 1. We will develop a systems-map illustrating the potential effects of the sugary drinks levy. We already have a draft map. We will add to and discuss our draft with a wide range of research, policy and practice experts to help us improve and refine it. We will also ask these experts to help us prioritise the most important effects and pathways for health that we should study further. 2. We will source information to help us study the high priority effects and pathways. This information might include large government surveys (e.g. of diet and obesity), commercial data (e.g. on sugary drinks sales), and more innovative sources (e.g. social media). To keep costs down, we will focus on ongoing studies and existing information. As this is collected anyway, there is no time pressure to analyse it immediately. But there will be a lot of work involved in finding the correct information and bringing it together. 3. We will collect information that would be lost if we wait any longer. This includes: conducting interviews with key people to understand their thoughts on, and experiences of, any changes occurring as a result of the levy adding questions to a monthly, national survey to study current attitudes to sugary drinks, and how these change over time collecting information from online supermarkets on the current sugar content of sugary drinks and other foods and drinks The groundwork will take one researcher 6 months and will be subject to appropriate ethical review. The researcher will be supported by senior scientists with expertise in public health, systems science, mathematical modelling, health economics and food policy. The main output will be the information needed for a proposal for the full study. We will also publish any results which others may find useful for example, our systems-map and findings from the national survey and interviews.

Project Status: Completed

URL for project: http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/phr/164901

Year Published: 2017

URL for published report: https://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/programmes/phr/164901/#/

English language abstract: An English language summary is available

Publication Type: Not Assigned

Country: England, United Kingdom

Organisation Name: NIHR Public Health Research programme

Contact Address: NIHR Journals Library, National Institute for Health and Care Research, Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre, Alpha House, University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton SO16 7NS, UK

Contact Name: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

Contact Email: journals.library@nihr.ac.uk

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