Public Nutrition and Health
What public health nutrition is, and causes of undernutrition
Trace undernutrition to its causes.
Public health nutrition promotes health by preventing nutrition problems in populations, through government policies and programmes. It is large-scale, organised and multidisciplinary: unlike clinical nutrition, which focuses on individual patients, it addresses whole communities.
A community is a group that shares common characteristics: a language, living conditions, a lifestyle, or a health problem. The public nutritionist identifies a problem and its size, understands its causes, plans and carries out action, and evaluates its impact.
Poverty is often the root cause of nutrition problems. It is made worse by a lack of toilets, sanitation and safe drinking water, which cause water-borne diseases and lost work days.
The causes of undernutrition work at three levels (Fig. 3.1):
- Immediate causes: a poor diet and disease.
- Underlying household causes: access to food, care practices, water and sanitation, health services, knowledge, discrimination, education.
- Basic causes: resources; the political, cultural, economic and social systems; and the status of women.
The outcome is malnutrition, disability and death. Diet and disease at the surface; poverty and systems underneath.
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