The Problem
The minor problem that had been encountered during the community nutrition field activity was that the people have different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Fortunately, it was determined that these factors do not have significant implications on the nutritional intake of the people in a community (Morales, Lara, Kington, Valdez, Escarce, 2002). This means that whether a family suffers from poverty or not, or whether they differ in ethnicity because of the migration of new families in the area, the people in the community have their own ways to cope with the needed nutrition of their families. The perceived difference pertaining to this case might be the difference in their preferences, which is not considered a major threat in their nutrition.
However, the major problems detected in the field included the lack of income sources as well as the difference in their native languages. Though socioeconomic and cultural factors are non-significant, it does not mean that unemployment and lack of proper communication is included to them. These two are separate factors, and each of the two poses significant threats in the nutrition of the people in the community.
The establishment of a common language between the experts and the people is an important factor for the assessment of nutrition of the community as a whole. Failure to do so would lead to a report with less credibility and misleading information (Cofield, Corona, Allison, 2010). Once it is distributed in the community, a misunderstanding will occur and this will lead to wrong consumption of food and the amount to be taken, assuming that the people followed properly the suggestions of the report. On the other hand, unemployment would often result in the inability to provide the daily nutrition of most families. As such, this leads to other complications such as obesity and other forms of disease (Akil, Anwar Ahmad, 2011).
Program/Site Effort
The time intended for the program was used extremely well. Everyone was participating in each activity especially in woman empowerment section. The only break time was during lunch. Women are needed to be informed because they are the ones who usually do the preparations for the family in terms of food and nutrition. Studies have shown that women who are knowledgeable enough about nutrition are more likely to improve the condition of their children in the long run (Cunningham, Ploubidis, Menon, Ruel, Kadiyala, Uauy, Ferguson, 2015). However, women must allocate more time in educating themselves and learning such areas of knowledge. This means that their household activities would be sacrificed.
The program served as training grounds for the development of a single language which will be commonly used by the people. As for the unemployed, they are trained with skills which will help them the money that they needed. These include jobs for women because they are the ones who are usually left in their house all day while the man works whole day. Skills such as sewing, jewelry making, and providing health care are specifically the skills that have been taught to them. In general, the program aimed to solve the major problems of nutrition in the community given that the workers are skilled enough to handle such program (Sunguya, Poudel, Miunde, Urassa, Yasuoka, Jimba, 2013).
Furthermore, the people, especially the women, are taught with basic needs to aid in the maintenance of nutrition in the community. They are taught with oral hygiene and basic health care services. Also, they are also taught with balancing the nutrition intake as well as the food which will provide the needed nutrition for their families. As for the nutrition check, it is important that they have to regularly consult experts who will guide them until they are decisive enough on their own (Vir, 2013). As for this case, the workers from this program have offered free consultation services for the women of the community.
Experience
As a preparation for the program, I needed to spend for at least two to five hours of office work, and three to four hours of research at home. Two-hour meetings were usually done after class in order to add or remove details for the program. In the times when there was no meeting, the communication still continued in the mails. After finalizing the details and the activities, we started the program by discussion of woman empowerment among woman refugees. This was done to prepare them for their lives ahead as well as to monitor their health for a week. On the next week, we started nutrition class for at least two hours a day. On the third week, we evaluated our program in the last two weeks and decided to improve it. The roles had been distributed from every member of the group and each of us had to extend our work at home. To ensure the quality of the revised program, one member was assigned to do regular evaluation. One significant change that we had done was to separate health and nutrition classes from one another because the important details are being skipped due to a limited allocation of time. The outcome was proven to be better than the last time. Another thing is that we also asked the people about their eating habits as well as their lifestyle. From there, we assessed if there were any changes from the time we first conducted classes. We used the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, in order to provide the people the necessary nutrients they needed, as well as to monitor their development in the whole period of our program (Shenkin, Jacobson, 2010). For example, we recommended them to drink water a lot instead of drinking too much soda, which is not good for their balanced diet.
References
Morales L, Lara M, Kington R, Valdez R, Escarce J. Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Behavioral Factors Affecting Hispanic Health Outcomes. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2002; 13(4): 477-503.
Cofield S, Corona R, Allison D. Use of Causal Language in Observational Studies of Obesity and Nutrition. Obes Facts. 2010; 3(6): 353-356.
Akil L, Anwar Ahmad H. Effects of Socioeconomic Factors on Obesity Rates in Four Southern States and Colorado. Ethn Dis. 2011; 21(1): 58-62.
Cunningham K, Ploubidis GB, Menon P, Ruel M, Kadiyala S, Uauy R, Ferguson E. Women's empowerment in agriculture and child nutritional status in rural Nepal. Public Health Nutr. 2015; 18(17): 3134-3145.
Vir S. Community Based Maternal and Child Health Nutrition Project, Uttar Pradesh: An Innovative Strategy Focusing on “At Risk” Families. Indian J Community Med. 2013; 38(4): 234-239.
Sunguya B, Poudel K, Miunde L, Urassa D, Yasuoka J, Jimba M. Nutrition Training Improves Health Workers’ Nutrition Knowledge and Competence to Manage Child Undernutrition: A Systematic Review. Front Public Health. 2013; 1: 37.
Shenkin J, Jacobson M. Using the Food Stamp Program and Other Methods to Promote Healthy Diets for Low-Income Consumers. Am J Public Health. 2010 September; 100(9): 1562–1564.
