African Heritage and Health Week takes place every year in February and provides a great opportunity to explore the enticing flavors and health-promoting qualities of traditional African cuisine. Intrigued by the campaign’s approach to promoting wellness through making healthy eating choices? A public health career with a specialty in dietetics may be a great fit for you.
African Heritage and Health Week is a great example of a fun (and delicious) public health-promoting campaign that gives people the opportunity to pick up tips and tricks to use in the kitchen throughout the year. “From obesity to diabetes, health disparities greatly affect the quality of life of African Americans,” shares Oldways, the Boston-based food and nutrition education nonprofit that organizes and promotes the annual campaign. In response to this health crisis, the group created the campaign to emphasize the power that heritage has to improve health and draw attention to approaches that may help address the unique health care needs of diverse populations.
Make Promoting Healthy Eating Throughout the Year Part of Your Career
The field of public health has five core disciplines and many core areas, including nutrition/dietetics. Beyond promoting health through annual campaigns like this one, those with this public health specialty use nutrition and food science to help people improve their health on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, they:
- Design individual nutritional therapies to address specific health issues, such as unhealthy weight, diabetes or hypertension
- Develop facility-wide nutrition programs for health care, educational, correctional and other institutions
- Increase public awareness of proper nutritional standards and habits
- Improve the accuracy and comprehension of food labels
- Ensure the safety of our food supply
- Research how changes in diet (such as reducing salt intake) affect health (by reducing blood pressure)
- Work with food manufacturers to improve the nutritional quality of prepared foods
Want to learn more about nutrition and dietetics? You can find answers to frequently asked questions about careers in this field on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics website.