Background information
Following the recent research by the Jamaica Queens organization, it is now evident that the community needs to improve on nutrition status. From the research, it is evident that obesity is one of the major illnesses associated with nutritional problems. From this context, a lot of cases associated with heart diseases have been reported in local health care centers. This has resulted to lack of productivity in the community, as more community members are now seeking interventions from healthcare providers.
Moreover, the consequences of having an unhealthy community are detrimental to the economy of the community. Therefore, it is important to have a plan that addresses the nutritional concerns of the community. Creation of nutrition counsel centers and recreational facilities are some of the ideas that will be included in this proposal. This proposal focuses on creating a self-designed nutritional program for the community.
Program goals
The program aims to provide the community residents with both dietetic and nutritional skills required in community nutrition. Moreover, the program seeks to develop and manage the nutritional programs that already exist in the community. In addition, the program seeks to provide the community members with interventional skills in regard to obesity. Finally, the program’s proposal seeks to develop a plan to create recreation facilities and nutrition counsel centers within the community.
Program objectives
The program aims at providing necessary skills and knowledge to community members on nutrition issues related to obesity. It is also the objective of the program to ensure that several nutritional management programs are created in the community in the next 2 years. Another objective is to provide obesity interventional programs that address issues of obesity in children, youth and adults. The program also aims at ensuring that the community has 4-5 nutrition counsel centers in the next 2 years. The program also aims at ensuring that several recreational facilities that promote physical exercises are developed in the community.
Logic model for the program
Program action plan
The community nutrition program that has its focus on obesity will utilize the following action plan.
Goals
- To improve the community’s members quality of life.
- Provide nutritional skills required in community nutrition.
- Develop and manage the nutritional programs that already exist in the community.
- Provide the community members with interventional skills in regard to obesity.
- Develop a plan to create recreation facilities and nutrition counsel centers within the community.
General objectives
- Provide necessary skills and knowledge to community members on nutrition issues related to obesity.
- Create several nutritional management programs are created in the community in a period of 2 years.
- Provide obesity interventional programs that address issues of obesity in children, youth and adults.
- Construct 4-5 nutrition counsel centers in the next 2 years.
- Establish several recreational facilities that promote physical exercises.
- Promote long-term healthy eating behaviors among community members.
- Establish obesity intervention measures and weight-related problems in the community.
- Promote a physically active lifestyle among the community members.
Prevalence objectives
- This proposal seeks to ensure that the program reduces the obesity prevalence in adults by 5 % each year.
- The proposal also seeks to reduce obesity prevalence among the children by 10% each year.
Priority intervention actions
- Promote the importance of a healthy diet through public awareness, group counseling session and one-on-one nutritional counseling sessions.
- Promote physical exercise among the population through establishment of recreation facilities for swimming, athletics and football.
- Promote health care services for over-weight individuals.
- Establishing certain social standards, where food dealers do not advertise junk and fatty foods in supermarkets and food stores.
- Promote education of the community members on nutritional values. This can be done through seminar and training conferences to ensure knowledge and skills is provided to community members.
Theory underlying the program
The program is based on a health behavior change theory. This theory seeks to establish best health practices that deviate from behavioral choices that endanger the quality of life. From this perspective, it is evident that obesity is a consequence of a bad practice in health. This theory advocate for intervention programs that establish and develop programs that promotes good behaviors on health. Another theory that is related to this program is behavioral choice theory. Behavioral choice theory alleges that a series of unhealthy choices would lead to obesity.
HP 2020 objectives
This program focuses on nutritional issues that address obesity and weight. In this context, the community nutrition program borrows the HP 2020 objectives on nutrition and weight issues. Therefore, the HP 2020 objectives focused on the social determinants of a diet. From this perspective, the program tries to put a focus on knowledge, skills and social characteristics that can be used by the community to improve on a healthy diet.
Another objective highlighted by the HP 2020 is the physical determinants associated with nutrition. This means that physical activities are highly regarded by both HP 2020 and the community nutrition program. Basically, the community nutrition program exemplifies the HP 2020 objectives on nutrition and weight issues. There is a lot of consistency between the HP 2020 and the nutrition program on matters of diet.
The education component
In most cases, nutrition education program should be addressed by the following components:
- Knowledge increase on nutrition issues and public awareness: This component seeks to educate the public on issues pertaining to nutrition. In this case, information regarding diet and health is of vital importance in the nutrition education program. The knowledge of the nutrition education program should reflect the intent of the policy-makers. Some of the issues that should be given priority in terms of knowledge are the nutritional requirements of the community. Other knowledgeable concepts that should be included in the nutritional education program are those of nutritional disorders. It is also important to include legislation issues that address food safety and labeling.
- Promotion of ideal nutritional practices: The nutrition education program should first focus on the nutritional value found in food. From this perspective, certain foods and food behaviors require encouraging among the community behaviors. For example, the program should promote the importance of a balanced diet. This should also be supplemented by information on availability and sources of certain foods. Another aspect of nutritional practices that requires promotion is food safety practice. Food safety practices include food handling, storage and food preparation practices. Other practices include processing and preservation practices. In some instances, a community nutrition education program addresses issues of food distribution in community and family units.
- Diversity and quantity of food supplies: The nutrition education program should focus on food production techniques in the community. This is to insist on increasing the diversity of food varieties and quantity. Another aspect of food supply is controlling of food wastage in the community.
Nutrition education lesson plan
Lesson title: Community nutrition program.
Learning objectives:
- Provide necessary skills and knowledge to community members on nutritional issues related to obesity.
- Create nutritional management programs in the next 2 years.
- Provide obesity intervention programs that address issues of obesity in children, youth and adults.
- Create and establish 4-5 nutrition counsel centers in the next 2 years.
- Create and establish several recreational facilities that promote physical exercises in the community.
- Learning to avoid unhealthy food products and acquiring new eating behaviors.
Learning activities:
- Food preparation techniques.
- Food handling, storage, preservation and safety techniques.
- Learning recommendable eating behaviors.
- Seminars and training conferences.
- Interactive activities and physical exercises.
- Public awareness meetings.
- Follow-up sessions.
Methods, materials, equipment:
- Use of questionnaires, literature review and practical lessons.
- Lessons and group sessions.
- Seminars and training conferences.
- Follow-up sessions
- Physical activities.
Evaluation: The program evaluation will first be done through the participation of all stakeholders in assessing the benefits of the program. Field workers, social workers and health care providers will take part in evaluating the effectiveness of the program. Government representative in the program will also be included in the evaluation process of the program.
Some of the tools to be included in the evaluation process will include questionnaires that will be given to the program participants. The questionnaire will focus on evaluating all aspects of the nutrition education program. For example, the questionnaire will seek to know where the participants have gained new nutritional practices.
Resources
For this program to be effective after its implementation, various resources are required. The resources include the personnel, volunteers, infrastructural facilities and data management systems.
- Personnel: This pool of resources will include volunteers, nutritionists and trainers. The main purpose of this pool of resources is to facilitate, plan and coordinate the functions of the nutrition program.
- Volunteers: This is a group of individuals who will work with the organization under wages or no pay at all. The volunteers will either work as social workers or nutritionists interns.
- Nutritionists: This is a group of professionals who are well endowed in the knowledge of nutrition. These nutritionists will be the main coordinators for the nutrition counseling sessions. The group will also focus in training the community members on issues related to nutrition.
- Trainers: This is a group of individuals with the responsibility of training other professionals to train the community members under different capacities.
- Infrastructural facilities: This is group of resources that include buildings, housing facilities and recreational facilities. The nutrition education program will require structures such as buildings, where training will take place. It is also important to note that recreational facilities such as swimming pools, soccer fields, basketball courts and physical fitness centers are essential.
- Data management systems: This community nutritional program will require an efficient data management system. For this reason, the program will hire the services of data management firms for technical support. In this aspect, the program will be seeking to have a data management system that is supported by an internet server. This will make it easier to electronically and digitally store and access data. In this aspect, data will be processed electronically by the use of computers.
Program implementation
The community implementation program will start by identifying the nutrition status of the community. This will be based from both children and adults nutrition status. The next step will include an action plan that includes the activities that require to be initiated to correct the nutrition status in the community.
The formulation of an action plan will then be succeeded by a communication strategy that aims at communicating the plan to all the program stakeholders. The implementation of the nutrition program requires control measures to ensure that the activities identified in the program are well executed.
Desired outcomes
- Participants have broader knowledge on healthy eating habits:
- Participants adopt new eating behaviors.
- Participants start valuing the importance of physical exercises.
- Participants adopt skills in food safety.
- Participants get involved in community nutrition and health promotion programs.
- Participants frequent in nutrition counseling programs.
The program evaluation will first be done through the participation of all stakeholders in assessing the benefits of the program. Field workers, social workers and health care providers will take part in evaluating the effectiveness of the program. Government representative in the program will also be included in the evaluation process of the program.
Some of the tools to be included in the evaluation process will include questionnaires that will be given to the program participants. The questionnaire will focus on evaluating all aspects of the nutrition education program. For example, the questionnaire will seek to know where the participants have gained new nutritional practices. The following indicators are some often criteria, which will indicate the success of the program.
- Participants avoid fatty foods: Most of the participants start to take a balanced diet and avoid junk foods.
- Increase in eating of a balanced diet among participants. There is an increase in demand for diverse food production, especially those with high nutritional value.
- Less people reported to be obese in healthcare centers. The local health care centers starts to report low turn out of individuals with obesity or weight-related cases.
- Community members are physically fit. This is an indication that more people are getting involved in physical activities.
- More emphasis is given on diet and nutrition on food adverts. This is an indication that the community and the public have been made aware on nutrition and diet issues.
Funding
The community nutrition program will get funds from government funding and subsidies, bank loans and grants from private lenders.
Sustainability
In the absence of finding by the government, banks and private lenders, the program will be sustainable through the will of the community members. It is the desire of the program that the positive outcomes from the nutrition education program will steer the program in future. For example, knowledge and skills offered to community members will constantly be passed down to other generations in future.
Inclusion of community members
The community members will be included in the program as volunteers, trainers and also nutrition counselors. Major decision in the program will include professionals from the community.