Public-private partnership (PPP) development: Toward building a PPP framework for healthy eating

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in public health have gained great attention in the global health literature over the last two decades. Evidence suggests that PPPs could contribute to mitigating complex health problems. There is, however, limited knowledge about the process and specific conditions in which PPPs for healthy eating, in particular, can be developed successfully. To address this gap, this article first summarizes the literature, and second, using qualitative content analysis, identifies factors deemed to influence the process of building PPPs for healthy eating. The literature search was undertaken in two stages. The first stage focused on PPPs in public health to understand what constitutes a PPP, and the types and characteristics of PPPs. The second stage sought empirical examples and conceptual papers related to PPPs for healthy eating to identify critical elements that could facilitate or hinder partnerships between the government and the food industry. The search yielded 38 articles on PPPs in public health and 20 on PPPs for healthy eating. The analysis generated 23 individual elements that have the potential to influence a successful process of building PPPs for healthy eating (eg, endorsement from an individual champion, equal representation from partner organizations on board committees). The analysis also yielded five factors that appeared to well-represent the 23 individual elements of PPP formation: motivation, enablers, governance, benefits, and barriers. These results constitute an important step to understand critical factors involved in the formation of PPPs in public health and should inform additional empirical research to validate them.