Helping the Community

In class this week we had two guest speakers from Access Alliance, a multicultural health and community service organization, come and tell us a little bit about what it means to be a dietitian in the community. The overall goal of the program is “to promote health and wellbeing and improve access to services for immigrants and refugees in Toronto by addressing medical, social, economic and environmental issues.” It was extremely interesting to learn about a dietitian’s role and responsibility within the community, and it became fairly obvious that there is a lot of variation from day to day. The interesting thing about community nutrition is that you can perform clinical one-on-one counseling as well as community work, allowing for so much diversity. I think that community nutrition is sometimes overlooked in our Food and Nutrition program even though there are so many opportunities, and I am extremely happy that I got to hear about it from people who experience it first-hand.

An interesting point that the guest speakers made was that even though clients will be refereed to them for nutrition, it is not always about nutrition management. The program is enriched in the determinants of health, and it is important to always remember the client’s experiences, priorities and changes they will be willing/able to make. If someone is referred to the program because they are hypertensive, but they come in for one-on-one counseling and start talking about how they are depressed, you cannot ignore them. And sometimes it may happen that “food” doesn’t even make it into the conversation.

It got me thinking about all the classes I’ve had to take at Ryerson, and it started to put them into perspective for me. As a transfer student, I often wondered why I had to “waste” my time taking courses on communication techniques, the determinants of health and family dynamics, as I wanted to practice as a clinical dietitian. But as my graduation approaches and I reflect on the program, I realize how important all these classes are and how they all interconnect and make up the term “nutrition professional.” Being a dietitian is not only about food, as it is equally as important to be personable, compassionate and an active listener. A dietitian is far more than an expert in food and nutrition, but a health professional dedicated to understanding the complex interconnections between individuals and food, and it is this relationship that now forms my comprehensive knowledge of nutrition and health.

Usually when people learn that I am studying to be a dietitian the first thing they say is, “I need you to put me on a diet,” or “Can you help me lose weight?’ Programs like the NCT at Access Alliance remind me of why I wanted to go into dietetics, and it wasn’t just to help my friends lose weight. I want to help people understand the connection between food and health, and help teach people to eat well in order to prevent and manage disease.

You can look on the Access Alliance website to learn more about the NCT (Newcomers Cooking Together).

http://accessalliance.ca/services/nutritionprograms

I think it’s such an amazing program, and I definitely want to try and get involved. Is anyone else interested?