JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Street food comprises prepared and readily available food and drinks sold by vendors, frequently situated along streets. It is popular among people of all classes as it is low-cost and readily available. However, unsafe food hygiene practices contribute to a substantial burden of foodborne illness particularly in insufficient hygiene during street food preparation, handling, storage, and serving leads. There is a gap in understanding how to change food hygiene behaviour sustainably among street food vendors and consumers in low income countries (LICs) and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Objective:

This review aims to identify the determinants of safe food hygiene behaviour and assess the effectiveness of food hygiene interventions for vendors and consumers in LICs and LMICs.

Methods:

We will search PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Scopus for peer-reviewed articles, and Google and Google Scholar for grey literature published in the English language from inception to 31 October 2023. We will apply the World Bank 2023 definition of LICs and LMICs to include studies from these countries in this review. Two independent reviewers will search, screen, and analyze the included literature. The determinant will be encoded in accordance with the behaviour centered design (BCD) checklist's definitions.Data will be analyzed by narrative synthesis for all objectives. If feasible, a meta-analysis will be performed for intervention studies.

Results:

This proposal outlines our proposed methodology for conducting a scoping review. The finding will generate an overview of the evidence available in the existing literature through searches of different databases.

Conclusions:

To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first scoping review investigating the determinants of street food hygiene behaviours and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions for vendors and consumers on street food hygiene in LICs and LMICs. Findings will lay the groundwork for a future street food safety network.