You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 11, Issue 7
  • Developing a policy to reduce the salt content of food consumed outside the home in Malaysia: protocol of a qualitative study

Article Text

Article menu
XML
Qualitative research
Protocol
Developing a policy to reduce the salt content of food consumed outside the home in Malaysia: protocol of a qualitative study
  1. Mhairi Karen Brown1,
  2. Suzana Shahar2,
  3. Yee Xing You2,
  4. Viola Michael3,
  5. Hazreen Abdul Majid4,
  6. Zahara Abdul Manaf2,
  7. Hasnah Haron2,
  8. Noor Shahida Sukiman2,
  9. Yook Chin Chia5,6,
  10. Feng J He1,
  11. Graham A MacGregor1
  1. 1Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  2. 2Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  3. 3Disease Control Division, Ministry of Health, Putrajaya, Malaysia
  4. 4Centre for Population Health (CePH) and Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  5. 5Department of Medical Science, Sunway University, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia
  6. 6Department of Primary Care Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  1. Correspondence to Mhairi Karen Brown; mhairi.brown{at}qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

Introduction Current salt intake in Malaysia is high. The existing national salt reduction policy has faced slow progress and does not yet include measures to address the out of home sector. Dishes consumed in the out of home sector are a known leading contributor to daily salt intake. This study aims to develop a salt reduction strategy, tailored to the out of home sector in Malaysia.

Methods and analysis This study is a qualitative analysis of stakeholder views towards salt reduction. Participants will be recruited from five zones of Malaysia (Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern regions and East Malaysia), including policy-makers, non-governmental organisations, food industries, school canteen operators, street food vendors and consumers, to participate in focus group discussions or in-depth interviews. Interviews will be transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Barriers will be identified and used to develop a tailored salt reduction strategy.

Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval has been obtained from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Research Ethics Committee (UKM PPI/1118/JEP-2020–524), the Malaysian National Medical Research Ethics Committee (NMRR-20-1387-55481 (IIR)) and Queen Mary University of London Research Ethics Committee (QMERC2020/37) . Results will be presented orally and in report form and made available to the relevant ministries for example, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Trade to encourage adoption of strategy as policy. The findings of this study will be disseminated through conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications and webinars.

  • public health
  • qualitative research
  • preventive medicine
  • nutrition & dietetics
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-044628

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Supplementary Data

      This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.

    Footnotes

    • Contributors FJH, SS, HAM, MKB and GAM conceived the project and designed the study. MKB wrote the first draft of the manuscript. SS, YXY, VM, HAM, ZAM, NSS, YCC and HH designed the questionnaires. All authors contributed to the refinement of the study protocol and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding This work is supported as part of the Newton Fund Impact Scheme by the Medical Research Council on behalf of UK Research and Innovation in the UK and by the Malaysia Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MiGHT) (grant number: MR/V005847/1). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the MRC or MiGHT.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.