Title : Healthy Eating and Balanced in not Expensive but it Requires Effective Planning and Strong Community Participation Evidences from Gujarat and Punjab India
Abstract:
Community engagement as the first step in preventive health intervention focuses on developing, empowering and building the capacity of the community to create interactions between the community members and the ecology that are health promoting rather than unhealthy. Public health nutrition (PHN) practice enables people to increase control over, and to improve their nutrition-related health. Thus effective PHN practice involves engaging the community or population at the first stages of intervention management. Successful preventive health interventions are greatly dependent on the participation and support of the community in which the intervention is developed and implemented. Community engagement as the first step in preventive health intervention focuses on developing, empowering and building the capacity of the community to create interactions between the community members and the ecology that are health promoting rather than unhealthy. Public health nutrition (PHN) practice enables people to increase control over, and to improve their nutrition-related health. Thus effective PHN practice involves engaging the community or population at the first stages of intervention management. Successful preventive health interventions are greatly dependent on the participation and support of the community in which the intervention is developed and implemented. The attainment of effective and sustainable outcomes is unlikely if health professionals plan interventions without consulting stakeholder groups or believe they are the experts in a field and know what is best for the community. Effective PHN practitioners are those that act as catalysts for community action, who empower others to develop intelligent strategies to deal with identified determinants of nutrition-related health problems. It should be noted that community engagement and development is not a structured or formulaic process but one that needs to be adapted and informed by the community itself. It has to be done in the context of individual communities.
The Presentation will discuss the results achieved because of focused community engagement activities for nutrition enhancement program in Gujarat and Punjab for adolescent girls and pregnant & lactating women including children from 6 months until 6years, respectively. The community engagement strategies included, local food mapping- deciphering local palate and seasonality, competitions such as master chef competition- exploring local recipes and recognising them, kitchen garden- lateral as well as medial- promoting seasonal vegetables, promoting important events and days- reinstating the importance of micro- nutrients and macro nutrients and focusing on overall nutritional gains. The major impetus for these activities was also during pandemic period, when the competitions and recipes could conducted online and could be promoted digitallyb as well. The community engagement strategy further corroborates measurement plan with community participation- community health screening camps, home visits for community feedback along with frontline workers, developing village health action plan and social audit using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) technique.
