Monitoring progress toward United Nations commitments: characteristics of Canadian legislation to promote tobacco control, physical activity and healthy eating. A descriptive study.

BACKGROUND

Legal interventions are important mechanisms for chronic disease prevention. Since Canadian laws to promote physical activity and healthy eating are growing, we compared the characteristics of legal interventions targeting physical activity and healthy eating with tobacco control laws, which have been extensively described.

METHODS

We reviewed 718 federal, provincial and territorial laws promoting tobacco control, physical activity and healthy eating captured in the Prevention Policies Directory between spring 2010 and September 2017. We characterized the legislation with regard to its purpose, tools to accomplish the purpose, responsible authorities, target location, level of coerciveness and provisions for enforcement.

RESULTS

Two-thirds (67.9%) of tobacco control legislation had a primary chronic disease prevention purpose (explicit in 5.3% of documents and implicit in 62.6%), and 29.5% had a secondary chronic disease prevention purpose. One-quarter (27.0%) of physical activity legislation had a primary chronic disease prevention purpose (explicit in 8.8% of documents and implicit in 18.1%), and 53.0% had a secondary chronic disease prevention purpose. In contrast, 69.3% of healthy eating legislation had no chronic disease prevention purpose. Tobacco control legislation was most coercive (restrict or eliminate choice), and physical activity and healthy eating legislation was least coercive (provide information or enable choice). Most tobacco control legislation (85.8%) included provisions for enforcement, whereas 47.4% and 24.8% of physical activity and healthy eating laws, respectively, included such provisions. Patterns in responsible authorities, target populations, settings and tools to accomplish its purpose (e.g., taxation, subsidies, advertising limits, prohibitions) also differed between legislation targeting tobacco control versus physical activity and healthy eating.

INTERPRETATION

Legislative approaches to promote physical activity and healthy eating lag behind those for tobacco control. The results serve as a baseline for building consensus on the use of legislation to support approaches to chronic disease prevention to reduce the burden of chronic disease in Canadians.