This assignment outlines the role of a public health dietician in terms of where they work, what they do, who they might work in collaboration with and what examples of some key health issues they address. It also looks at how the public health dietician role contributes to public health outcomes and ways it may become more important in New Zealand’s health system.
According to (Public Health Workforce, n.d.), a Public Health Dietician (referred to as a dietician throughout the essay) has a key role in the New Zealand (NZ) healthcare system to prevent diseases on a population scale and therefore improve health outcomes.
District Health Boards (DHBs) and non-government organisations (NGOs) such as the Heart Foundation …show more content…
Dieticians work in the Heart Foundation Tick Programme. This is a programme where food products in local supermarkets are labelled with a tick, two ticks or no ticks depending on the nutritional value. This educates consumers to make healthy choices (Heart Foundation, 2016). In this role dieticians are involved in research and review of the tick criteria and communicate to others about the tick programme (Heart Foundation, …show more content…
One of many organisations trying to improve this is the human nutrition unit, a part of the University of Auckland (HNU). They are conducting a 3-year international study (PREVIEW) to develop new recommendations for the prevention of type 2 diabetes (Human Nutrition Unit, 2016). Dieticians have been involved in developing guidelines for the research and at completion of the study will create healthy eating advice for the population based upon the results. Dieticians also work with Diabetes NZ to supply nutritional information through their website to help those with diabetes or others who seek information about the disease. Dieticians help create the nutritional information section with recipes, tips, how to read food labels and what to buy and what not to buy for a diabetic. This can help diabetics or those hosting diabetics to minimise the risk of getting unstable blood sugar levels (Diabetes New Zealand, 2014). Dieticians creating prevention strategies is a vital way to contribute to improved health outcomes. By knowing what to look for in the onset of disease, developing healthy eating plans and spreading awareness can reduce the amount of people with diet induced diabetes in NZ (Diabetes New Zealand,