Last summer I volunteered at the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, an organization that helps run several prenatal nutrition programs throughout Toronto. I worked with a team of health professionals to educate expectant mothers including teenage, Aboriginal and low-income women on the detection and prevention of risk factors contributing to developmental deficits. The teen program was held in the Jane and Finch community, and not only offered nutrition information, but also provided participants with a healthy dinner, subway tokens, food vouchers and access to food bank items.
Talking about the social determinants of health and “building healthy communities” in class these past few weeks got me thinking about my past volunteer experience. I took the initiative to further research the program, which is part of the Canadian Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP), hoping to complement the theory I learned in class and put my experience into perspective. I discovered that the top 5 reported risk factors among participants in the Canadian Prenatal Nutrition Program in 2007-2008 were: low income, living in Canada for less than 5 years, being a single parent with no income, having no or limited English language ability and having been hungry or skipped a meal. These findings display the extent to which the lack of access to the social determinants of health (specifically income and food security) pose risks to the health and wellbeing of participants and their babies.
The Canadian Prenatal Nutrition Program is statistically proven to be helpful. Upon evaluation, many participants reported that they started to breastfeed as a result of the helpful information and support that they received. Furthermore, a large majority of participants reported that they learned a lot about healthy eating, and will make changes in order to support the growth and development of their baby. However, will this information and guidance help them overcome their disadvantages? In class we discussed the importance of addressing the social determinants of health in order to overcome health inequities and move forward. Is teaching a pregnant teenager about healthy eating enough? Shouldn’t we dig deeper and investigate their socioeconomic status, and try to make changes to their diet that are feasible? We need to be mindful of factors that influence food choice like education, culture, money and the environment. Encouraging a healthy lifestyle is not necessarily enough... I think we need to start looking into the societal factors. For example, why are these teenagers getting pregnant? What can be done to better educate these teenagers on safe sex, to provide them with the tools they need to raise a healthy baby, and to make it so that teen pregnancy is not the “norm” in their community?
There needs to be more community initiatives to address food security status, income, and support services for immigrants. We need to address the underlying determinants of health through community service organizations, and we need to conduct targeted advocacy initiatives to federal, provincial and local decision makers. We need to take action in addressing the underlying issues that influence health, and translate them into public policy and programs.
Sources:
The Canadian Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP) Screening and Evaluation Resource Book
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