Objectives and competences

Pedagogical objectives:

• To know the advantages of Community intervention compared to interventions at the individual level.
• To identify and to describe the different stages of the design of a community intervention program.
• To handle different tools for needs assessment, implementation of interventions and their evaluation.
• To know different community intervention programs implemented in Portugal.

Expected results:

• To be able to do the needs assessment and to design intervention strategies for different population groups.
• To be able to evaluate, critically, community interventions.

Teaching Methodologies

This subject consists of lectures, where expositive and reflective methods are used, and practical sessions where students outline interventions and develop the materials. They also train their competences on spatio-temporal organization, articulating all stages of their interventions, beginning with the needs assessment and ending with the intervention assessment.
The exchange of ideas is encouraged by the presentation of all works in the class.

Syllabus

1. Community nutrition: presentation of the unit and assessment criteria.
2. Introductory concepts.
3. Strategies for the success of community nutrition programs.
4. Planning in community nutrition.
5. Impact assessment of nutritional interventions – how to do and how to access.
6. Nutritional/ dietary interventions for different population groups:
   1. Infancy: promotion of a healthy diet in the first years of life.
   2. Nutrition and diet in scholar age.
   3. Dietary interventions in adults.
   4. Dietary interventions in the adolescence.
   5. Dietary interventions in elderly people.
7. Conception of food guides.
8. The role of a nutritionist in a municipality.
9. The role of a nutritionist in community projects.
10. Mass media and health promotion.
11. Global strategy for food, physical activity and health.