Malnutrition remains a major challenge for public health and for human and economic development in India. A lack of adequately trained public health professionals and nutritionists means that this challenge is not being met. Due to resource constraints, the most realistic way of improving this situation is to optimise the use of existing infrastructure. The first step to do this is to assess the current landscape of public health nutrition (PHN) education in India.
Based on a situation analysis and recent fi ndings from qualitative studies undertaken by the Transform Nutrition capacity building team, at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), this brief summarises recommendations for the role of higher education in tackling malnutrition in India.
In order to nurture the field of PHN as well as its trained professionals, the team outlined a few F-E-A-S-I-B-L-E recommendations:
- Funding improved allocation to PHN research and training
- Expand the horizons of nutrition from a clinical to a societal approach to effectively address the nutrition problems and challenges at the community, programmatic and public policy levels
- Augment existing resources to strengthen PNH in the curriculum
- Strategic positioning of nutrition in India’s development agenda
- Invest in short term training programs, workshops, distance learning courses and other faculty development programs to enhance the quality of the PHN workforce.
- Build mentorship and encourage rigorous training, scientific writing, integrating research methods and hands on experiences
- Learn about PHN capacity building and strengthening from successes and failures elsewhere and adapt for contextual validity and sustainability
- Employment opportunities must be increased along with satisfactory remuneration