Abstract
Nutrition is an important component of public health and health care, including in education and research, and in the areas of policy and practice. This statement was the overarching message during the third annual International Summit on Medical Nutrition Education and Research, held at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, in August 2017. This summit encouraged attendees to think more broadly about the impact of nutrition policy on health and communities, including the need to visualize the complete food system from “pre-farm to post-fork.” Evidence of health issues related to food and nutrition were presented, including the need for translation of knowledge into policy and practice. Methods for this translation included the use of implementation and behavior change techniques, recognizing the needs of health-care professionals, policy makers, and the public. In all areas of nutrition and health, clear and effective messages, supported by open data, information, and actionable knowledge, are also needed along with strong measures of impact centered on an ultimate goal: to improve nutritional health and wellbeing for patients and the public.
Highlights
Nutrition has a vital role in maintaining health and preventing disease
Giuseppe Grosso discussed the need for strong evidence to inform policy and public health messages, recognizing the limitations of some studies, including the ethical challenges when researching the impact of food and nutrition in humans
Nutrition education provides the means to connect the everexpanding and changing body of research-based evidence to policy and practice. This year, the Summit focused more broadly on how to impact policy and the need to concentrate on the full food system from “pre-farm to post-fork.”
Summary
Nutrition has a vital role in maintaining health and preventing disease. As such, a chain of events from food production, through the food environment to dietary choices, advice and interventions, summatively impact nutritional status, modulating health or disease. The Summit brought together international organizations and individuals involved in nutrition education and research This year, the focus was on how to work together to build a strong evidence base and translate that evidence into policy and practice, looking at the whole system of food, nutrition, and health. Farming practices impact food production, which impacts on food environment and nutrient quality, subsequently influencing dietary choices, leading to the “postfork” impact on nutritional and health status Examining this whole systems approach demonstrated the need for strong evidence and ways to translate that evidence into policy and practice at all levels within the system, including clear communication, and public health messaging. Giuseppe Grosso discussed the need for strong evidence to inform policy and public health messages, recognizing the limitations of some studies, including the ethical challenges when researching the impact of food and nutrition in humans. Most people recognized the need for and benefits of open data and provided suggestions for how NNEdPro and GODAN can continue to advocate and develop systems for open data access, such as the use of trials registries and repositories, formats for standardizing the anonymization of subject data, and ways to link data sources
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