Population & Public Health Nutrition

Information for Health Professionals

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 professional 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.

Learn more:

How to Contact Us

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

Populations

Preconception, Pregnancy, and Lactation | Growth Monitoring: Birth to 19 Years | Infants & Young Children | Children & Youth | Adults | Older Adults | Household Food Insecurity | Indigenous Peoples | Newcomers to Canada

Preconception, Pregnancy & Lactation

These are life stages when individuals and families look for nutrition information and conversations with care providers. You can use this comprehensive set of resources to support your clients with evidence-based nutrition information

Preconception

Pregnancy & Lactation

Growth Monitoring: Birth to 19 Years

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

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

Older Adults

Eating well is an important part of aging. The following resources will help you link older adults to nutrition screening and information to support staying strong and healthy as they age.

How Older Adults Want to Receive Nutrition Information to Stay Strong and Healthy

Household 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.

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.

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.