Health and Nutrition Policy-Part 2

Instructor: David H. Holben

On this Thursday, firstly we continued to study the Nutrition Policy in the U.S. We mainly studied the process of policy making. To give us deep impression about how a nutrition policy can be made, Dr. Holben played a interesting cartoon video. Policy making, as was said in the class, is the process by which authorities decide which actions to take to address a problem or set of problems. The policy cycle explained details about this. Problem definition and agenda setting, formulate alternative, policy adoption, policy impletation, policy evaluation, then policy termination or a new cycle again till the policy can be made. I have never heard of nutrition policy making before, so this class interested me a lot. And I am very honor to know the process of policy making or something about law making in America through a vivid way-cartoon. I have learned a little about policy in the U.S. when I was in high school in China, but nutritional policy is really a new term to me. I think public health and policy making are comprehensive and perfect in America. As a nutrition student who might be step into the society soon, knowledge in major courses is not enough; how to involved in the society, how to utilize the significance of knowledge I learned in university, understanding the process how the whole system is conducted are equally important.

Secondly, community needs assessment was disscussed. The steps of community needs assessment are very important: 1. define the problem; 2. set the parameters of the assessment; 3. collect data; 4. analyze or interpret data; 5. share the findings; 6. set priorities; 7. choose a plan of action. This is related to our final project of this course. And our group, after discussion, found out a leader to guide us on gardening. We also initially decided to take the pregant women as our target population for research. More details about the final project will be disscussed in the following weeks. I am looking forward to having a big harvest for my first gardening experience and having a really awesome community nutrition project with my group members.