The Ol Man Blong Vanuatu project : protocol for a participatory interdisciplinary approach to understanding lifestyle transitions in Pacific Island Countries and Territories

The Ol Man Blong Vanuatu Project: understanding how food, lifestyle, and well-being are changing in Pacific Island communities Pacific Island communities are going through rapid and interconnected changes that affect what people eat, their physical activities, how they live, and how healthy they are. Traditional diets based on locally grown root crops, fish, and fruits are being increasingly displaced by imported and processed foods such as rice, tinned meat, ultra-processed foods, and sugary drinks. At the same time, climate change, through more intense cyclones, droughts, and rising sea levels, is damaging the gardens and fisheries that communities have long depended on for food. These combined pressures are contributing to food insecurity, lower physical activites and also to alarming rates of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases across the Pacific region. Despite growing awareness of these problems, very few studies have listened to how Pacific Island communities themselves experience and make sense of these changes, and even fewer have compared what is happening in remote villages with what is happening in urban centres within the same country. The Ol Man Blong Vanuatu Project aims to fill this gap. It is an immersive research study set in Vanuatu, an archipelago in the South-Western Pacific, that combines broader inter-island observations during a traditional canoe voyage on Emae, Tongoa, Ambrym, and Malo Pass, with a paired comparison between a remote coastal village (Kerepua, Espiritu Santo) and urban and peri-urban coastal communities (Port Vila, Efate). The project is designed to work with people, placing their voices, knowledge, and priorities at the centre. It explores three interconnected questions: how are diet and physical activity changing? How are communities negotiating modernisation in relation to customary and post-growth lifeways? And what does well-being and a "good life" mean to people living through these transitions? By comparing rural and urban settings using identical methods, the project will help identify what drives different patterns of change and how communities are responding to adapt. The findings are intended to inform more culturally appropriate and locally grounded health, food, and climate policies in Vanuatu and across the Pacific region. The project is part of the broader European-funded Family fArming Lifestyle And Health in the Pacific programme (FALAH).