Population & Public Health Nutrition

Information for Health Professionals

Product Development Process | Populations | Public Health eLearning

Public Health Dietitians

Who We Are

Public Health Dietitians are experts in nutrition and public health. We work with various stakeholders and sectors within and external to Alberta Health Service (AHS) to support healthy food environments. We also provide public health nutrition expertise and help translate nutrition knowledge to others to promote the nutritional health of all Albertans.

Who We Work With

Public Health Dietitians work with many sectors, communities, groups, and health professionals to support healthy eating in different settings. Examples include schools, early learning and childcare centres, communities, and public spaces. We engage with partners to understand their needs and how we can most effectively support them.

What We Do

We work with others to:

  • Make the healthy eating choice the easy choice in early learning and childcare centres, schools, workplaces, communities, recreation centres, and other settings.
  • Guide development of policies and practices that promote healthy eating.
  • Develop tools and resources to support changes to the food environments in various settings.
  • Work with organizations to support ways to reduce health disparities for individuals and groups who experience barriers to healthy eating.
  • Provide nutrition advice to health professionals.

How to Contact Us

If you have questions or feedback, email us at publichealth.nutrition@ahs.ca

Product Development Process

We use a process called the Product Development Process to address nutrition related issues and promote healthy eating behaviours. This 9-step tool, developed by our team, integrates commercial product development principles with health promotion theories and practice. Evidence, collaboration, and consultation are core components which inform the PDP steps.

Populations

Preconception, Pregnancy, and Lactation | Infants & Young Children | Children & Youth | Adults & Seniors | Indigenous Peoples | Food Insecurity | Newcomers to Canada

Preconception, Pregnancy, and Lactation

You can use this comprehensive review of evidence to help develop effective strategies to communicate nutrition information to women and families during pregnancy.

Evidence Review: Maternal Health

Prenatal Nutrition Tool

The Prenatal Nutrition Tool can be used to help prepare you for working with pregnant clients. It can help to focus the conversations on nutrition topics that influence parental and infant health outcomes. It includes 2 parts:

A questionnaire that covers 4 topics:

  • pregnancy weight gain
  • multivitamins
  • life circumstances
  • overall food intake

A conversation guide, to assist you when talking with your client about the nutrition topics for pregnancy.

Pictorial Resources

A series of pictorial-based nutrition handouts that you can use with pregnant clients who may have low English literacy. Look for these handouts under Pregnancy and Breastfeeding on the Nutrition Education page.

Infants & Young Children

You can use this comprehensive review of evidence to help you create effective strategies to support the knowledge, skills, and capacity of parents of children aged 0-6 years to improve their eating behaviours.

Nutrition Guidelines

Evidence Review: Children Birth to 6 Years

Children & Youth

This comprehensive review of evidence can help you develop strategies to effectively engage parents and families to influence nutritional behaviours of their children aged 6-18 years.

Evidence Review: Children and Youth

You can use this comprehensive review of evidence to inform school meal and snack programs based on their impact on household food insecurity, learning, and health outcomes.

Evidence Review: School Meal and Snack Programs

Adults & Seniors

The effects of various population level interventions that aim to reduce nutrition-related chronic disease are included in this comprehensive review. It uses current evidence to answer the following questions:

  • Which universal population health promotion interventions are recommended to improve healthy eating behaviors of adults (≥18 years)?
  • Which universal interventions are recommended for the primary prevention of chronic diseases amongst adults, through improved nutrition outcomes?

Evidence Review: Nutrition-related chronic disease prevention interventions

Indigenous Peoples

You can use this evidence and knowledge summary to inform various engagement activities that may be useful for health professionals when engaging with Indigenous peoples, communities, and stakeholders for ways to support the health priorities of Indigenous peoples, including health priorities that are nutrition related.

Food Insecurity

Household food insecurity – the inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints – is a serious public health issue. You can use the resources to guide understanding of the issue in Canadian health and social context, inform program and policy development, and address myths and misconceptions of the experience of household food insecurity and effective actions to address it.

Newcomers to Canada

You can use this toolkit as a program provider or healthcare professional who works with newcomers to Canada. This toolkit contains nutrition teaching resources for English language learners and people with diverse cultural backgrounds.

Public Health Nutrition eLearning

These nutrition modules were designed for AHS health professionals working in public health settings. Module content is aligned with provincial Nutrition Guidelines for Healthy Infants and Young Children.