The University of British Columbia healthy beverage initiative: changing the beverage landscape on a large post-secondary campus

Objective: Environmental interventions are more effective at changing nutrition behaviour than educational campaigns alone. As part of their health promotion efforts, the University of British Columbia (UBC) developed the Healthy Beverage Initiative (HBI) to ultimately reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) on campus. We describe the development, implementation, preliminary evaluation and future of the HBI. Design: Naturalistic observation of environmental changes to induce behaviour change. Setting: Large urban research university campus. Participants: University community members and campus visitors. Results: Three main activities have been implemented since the initiation of the UBC HBI: renegotiation of the cold beverage agreement, a media campaign to promote tap water consumption and the removal of SSB from select retail locations on campus (residence dining hall). No significant loss of revenue was observed following the removal of SSB from a residence dining hall compared with similar locations. Compensatory purchasing behaviour of SSB was not observed at the closest retail locations where they were still available. After the removal of SSB, similar to 75% of survey respondents were not aware that the beverages had been removed. Conclusions: The implementation of the HBI has met little resistance from the UBC community. The removal of SSB from residence dining locations did not result in any significant revenue loss or compensatory purchasing behaviour. This suggests that environmental intervention initiatives appear to be a viable option that may reduce SSB consumption on post-secondary campuses.

Automated summary

The Healthy Beverage Initiative (HBI) developed by UBC successfully reduced the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) on campus through renegotiating cold beverage agreements, promoting tap water consumption, and removing SSB from select retail locations. There was no significant revenue loss or compensatory purchasing behavior observed after the removal of SSB.