Patterson Patrick B, McIntyre Lynn, Anderson Laura C, Mah Catherine L
Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Division of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University, St John's, NL, Canada.
Health Promot Int. 2017 Oct 1;32(5):871-880. doi: 10.1093/heapro/daw019.
Household food insecurity (HFI), insufficient income to obtain adequate food, is a growing problem in Canada and other Organisation of economic cooperation and development (OECD) countries. Government political orientations impact health policies and outcomes. We critically examined Canadian political rhetoric around HFI from 1995 to 2012 as a means to support effective healthy public policy argumentation. We analysed a data set comprised of Hansard extracts on HFI from the legislative debates of the Canadian federal and three provincial governments, using thematic coding guided by interpretivist theories of policy. Extracts were examined for content, jurisdiction, the political affiliation of the legislator speaking and governing status. Members of non-governing, or 'opposition' parties, dominated the rhetoric. A central hunger-as-poverty theme was used by legislators across the political spectrum, both in government and in opposition. Legislators differed in terms of policy approach around how income should flow to citizens facing HFI: income intervention on the left, pragmatism in the centre, reliance on markets on the right. This analysis is a case-example from Canada and caution must be exercised in terms of the generalizability of findings across jurisdictions. Despite this limitation, our findings can help healthy public policy advocates in designing and communicating HFI policy interventions in OECD countries with a similar left-right spectrum. First, even with a divisive health policy issue such as actions to address HFI, core themes around poverty are widely understood. Secondly, the non-polarizing centrist, pragmatist, approach may be strategically valuable. Thirdly, it is important to treat the rhetoric of opposition members differently from that of government members.
家庭粮食不安全（HFI），即没有足够收入获取充足食物，在加拿大及其他经济合作与发展组织（OECD）国家正成为一个日益严重的问题。政府的政治倾向会影响卫生政策及成果。我们批判性地审视了1995年至2012年期间加拿大围绕家庭粮食不安全问题的政治言辞，以此作为支持有效的健康公共政策论证的一种方式。我们分析了一个数据集，该数据集由加拿大联邦政府和三个省政府立法辩论中关于家庭粮食不安全问题的议会议事录摘录组成，采用政策解释主义理论指导下的主题编码方法。对摘录内容进行审查，涉及管辖权、发言议员的政治派别及执政地位。非执政或“反对”党成员主导了相关言辞。政治光谱各端的议员，包括政府和反对党议员，都使用了一个核心的饥饿即贫困主题。议员们在关于收入应如何流向面临家庭粮食不安全问题的公民的政策方法上存在差异：左翼主张收入干预，中间派主张实用主义，右翼则依赖市场。本分析是来自加拿大的一个案例，在将研究结果推广至不同司法管辖区时必须谨慎。尽管有此限制，但我们的研究结果有助于健康公共政策倡导者在具有类似左右政治光谱的经合组织国家设计和宣传家庭粮食不安全问题的政策干预措施。首先，即使是像解决家庭粮食不安全问题的行动这样具有争议性的卫生政策问题，围绕贫困的核心主题也得到广泛理解。其次，非两极分化的中间派实用主义方法可能具有战略价值。第三，将反对党成员的言辞与政府成员的言辞区别对待很重要。
