L2 Community and Public Health

Question 1

What is the difference between community nutrition and public health nutrition?

Answer 1

Community nutrition: working directly with individuals and families while contributing to larger public health efforts to prevent and intervene upon nutrition problems.
Public health nutrition: is a term usually used for responsibilities carried out by public health agencies a local, provincial, and federal levels. The programs developed are usually directed to communities, organizations, and systems that have their own goals in health promotion and disease prevention. Public health is often involved in policy development.

Question 2

What are the roles of dietitians in public health?

Answer 2

• To create environmental and systemic changes to make the healthy choice the easy choice
• Build food security in communities through advocacy, education, and community mobilization.
• Advocate for nutrition-related issues such as food labeling guidelines, breastfeeding promotion, a sustainable food system, and nutritional screening for at risk populations.
• Apply health promotion strategies to identify the needs of the community including work places, and build programs to address those needs.
• Use strategies based on the social determinants of health to help build healthy communities
• Participate in policy development and conduct health research and evaluate to further nutrition knowledge and practice.

Question 3

What are the roles of a community nutritionist?

Answer 3

• regardless of professional focus it is to build partnerships with communities, groups, and individuals to plan the best approach to overcome barriers to overcome barriers to achieving health
• capacity building engages people to make their community a healthier and more vibrant place
• community skill building and empowerment
• advocate for health-related human rights
• support social action
• has a duty to help realize human rights within their scope of work

Question 4

What is CBPR?

Answer 4

Community-based partnership research - involves equitable, co-learning relationships between academic institutions and community partners that focus on community-selected issues and aim to improve community health and eliminate health disparities by generating action for social change

Question 5

Community capacity building

Answer 5

Building the community based on the strengths and resiliances of the community. An asset-based approach.

Question 6

Asset-based community development

Answer 6

Considers the local assets, strengths, and potentials as the primary building blocks of community development. Contrasts with a deficit based approach.

Question 7

What is public health advocacy?

Answer 7

• an emphasis based on collective action to effect systematic change.
• focus on upstream factors like laws, institutional practices, prices, and product standards
• recognizes the importance of engaging in political processes to effect the desired policy changes

Question 8

What is health advocacy?

Answer 8

Taking a position and acting in a deliberate attempt to influence public and private policy choices

Question 9

What is policy? Where does health policy occur?

Answer 9

A consensus on the ideas that form the basis of action and hence underline decision making.
-schools, community, provincial, federal

Question 10

What are human rights?

Answer 10

Grounded in morals and values that are deemed to apply to all human beings.

Question 11

What is the purpose of community nutrition interventions?

Answer 11

They are designed to help prevent disease, and improve health, nutrition, and well-being.

• It is a combination of program elements or strategies designed to produce behavior changes or improve health status among individuals or an entire population.
• Interventions may include educational programs, new or stronger policies, improvements in the environment, or a health promotion campaign
• Interventions may be implemented in different settings including communities, worksites, schools, health care organizations, faith-based organizations or in the home.
• Interventions implemented in multiple settings and using multiple strategies may be the most effective because of the potential to reach a larger number of people in a variety of ways.

Question 12

How do interventions cause change?

Answer 12

• By influencing individuals’ knowledge, attitudes,
  beliefs and skills;
• By increasing social support; and
• Creating supportive environments, policies and
  resources.

Question 13

What is a key approach to reaching communities and what are the methods? Give an example of a social marketing campaign in Canada

Answer 13

Mass communication and social marketing:
- Printed materials
- Videos
- Internet
- Social networking sites
- e-health innovations
Social marketing campaigns that emphasize
physical activity, healthy eating and/or healthy
weights are one type of common community level
health promotion tool. ie. Participaction