Regional collaborative impacts over 300,000 bay area residents with healthy beverage policies

The Bay Area Nutrition and Physical Activity Collaborative (BANPAC), a program of Santa Clara County Public Health Department, is a regional collaborative of over 400 members in more than 250 public and private organizations dedicated to empowering low-income communities to make systems and environmental changes that address the obesity epidemic. BANPAC has led the Bay Area's Rethink Your Drink campaign since 2008, reaching over half a million Bay Area residents with educational messages about the health risks associated with sugary drinks and the advantages of drinking water and other non-sweetened beverages. A 2008-9 study by Field Research and additional studies in 2010 and 2012 demonstrated the effectiveness of this educational campaign in promoting water and decreasing the consumption of sugary beverages, especially within the Latino community. In 2011-12, BANPAC initiated an effort to sustain the beverage consumption behavior changes by assisting 15 Bay Area organizations (a food bank, low-income housing, a municipality, youth and ethnic-specific organizations) to create and implement healthy beverage policies. Our evaluation showed that 308,640 Bay Area residents were impacted by these policies. With an 87% response rate, the six months follow up demonstrated that 90% of organizations were completely following healthy beverage policies in their community events and meetings and a majority adhered to the policies in every organizational venue (from fundraising to onsite sales.) Vending was the most problematic area for implementation. We will present evaluation data, what was learned about effective strategies for motivating organizational change, and how to overcome the most common challenges.