25-6
SOLVING NUTRITION PROBLEMS IN THE COMMUNITY
In helping health workers learn about food needs
in their communities and what to do about them, it
makes sense to use a problem-solving approach.
Health workers will be better prepared to put their
learning into practice if they learn by actually
working with people and their needs. This means
moving the focus of learning out of the classroom and
into the community.
To follow is a list of steps that health workers may
find useful in approaching the nutritional and food
problems in their communities. Although it may help to discuss the steps
first, they can best be learned through practice. (Chapter 6 gives additional ideas
for ways to make ‘field work’ in nearby communities a basic part of the training
program.)
Suggested steps for approaching food problems in a community:
1. Know (or get to know) the people well. Try to understand their attitudes,
beliefs, traditions, and fears, especially those that relate to food. (See
Chapter 7.)
2. Try to find out how much malnutrition there is in your community and
who is most affected. Often children suffer most from malnutrition, then
pregnant women and nursing mothers, and then old people. Be sure to check
the nutrition of sick persons. This is often a big problem because of traditional
(ears and beliefs about what people should or should not eat and drink when
sick (or after childbirth—see Where There Is No Doctor, page 123).
3. Consider which food and nutrition problems are most important—in
terms of how the people feel about them (felt needs) and in terms of how
much they affect people’s health and well-being (real needs).
4. Look for the causes (often a combination or chain of causes) of malnutrition
and other food-related problems. These causes may include people’s habits
and attitudes, land ownership, farming practices, water shortages, storage
and spoilage, food prices, marketing, and wages. Try to separate causes that
originate within the community from those that come from outside.
5. Carefully consider the obstacles that you might meet in trying to solve
specific problems. (Many nutrition projects have failed because of obstacles
that were not considered ahead of time.)
6. Together with the community, decide which problems to attack first Try to
be sure that. . .
• the people recognize the importance of the problems they choose and are
interested in working together to solve them, and
• the first problems chosen are fairly easy to combat, and that action taken is
likely to give quick, obviously beneficial results.