regularization, stress management, fostering healthy relationships, and quitting unhealthy habits such as tobacco, alcohol and other harmful behaviors are critical for the health of individuals and communities. Present-day health and nutrition challenges call for a paradigm shift in approach by focusing more on preventive, holistic, and patient cantered solutions. Poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, inadequate sleep, and smoking are the primary modifiable risk factors for many chronic health conditions. However, these factors are often overlooked in the health system dominated by the treatment model. Acknowledging the lack of knowledge and skills of health care professionals in recognizing common modifiable risk factors to disease, there is a need to train them to identify, understand and discuss health-promoting behaviors with the public. This course introduces theoretical and practical knowledge and skills by combining public health nutrition and lifestyle medicine to multi -sectoral health care professionals. Both components gel together to inform health professionals about how they can transform population health by applying principles of nutrition and lifestyle interventions to prevent and treat nutrition and lifestyle-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity, some neurological conditions, and some cancers. Overall, the students will gain the necessary real-world experiences, specialized expertise, and interdisciplinary public health knowledge needed to create a resilient culture of health for people of Pakistan. The course covers epidemiological, dietary, public health, social, and biological aspects of nutritional science and lifestyle medicine. The first half of the course covers foundations of public health and public health nutrition, nutritional epidemiology and biostatistics, fundamentals of human nutrition and applied nutrition. The second half of the course is built upon the science of exercise and physical activity, mental health and behavioral physiology including stress management and sleep regulation, and intervention and prevention for unhealthy habits such as substance abuse and relapse prevention. The Diploma mainly focuses on nutritional and lifestyle problems in Pakistan and other low and middle-income countries – although skills and learning outcomes are widely applicable to all populations nationally and internationally. This curriculum is developed by consulting public health courses of international universities such as American college of lifestyle medicine, Harvard school of public health, Bloomberg School of public health, Emory University, London school of hygiene and tropical medicine, University of Chester etc. List and detail of course and reference documents are attached as annexation one.
Target audience
The target audience of this diploma are graduates from different disciplines such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, nutritionists, exercise physiologists and other allied health or non-health professionals who wish to develop 4 skills in public health nutrition and lifestyle medicine research and teaching, operational work in the field or community nutrition and lifestyle programs, design nutrition and lifestyle intervention programs, including health promotion and nutrition and lifestyle education, and policy and program planning in nutrition and lifestyle.
Course Learning Objectives
The course objective is to create a workforce of public health professionals with knowledge and skills of public health nutrition and lifestyle medicine to recognize, manage, communicate and research nutritional and lifestyle concerns at the individual, community and population level.
Student Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
• Demonstrate an advanced knowledge of Public health Nutrition and lifestyle medicine at biological, social and policy levels
• Identify common nutrition and lifestyle risk factors affecting health of individuals and communities.
• Evaluate critically, select and apply a range of appropriate research skills and techniques, including anthropometry, dietary analysis, statistics, epidemiology, research, computing & information retrieval.
• Interpret and synthesize different types of data used to analyze and assess nutritional and lifestyle problems at population and subpopulation levels
• Understand public health nutrition and lifestyle interventions such as exercise and nutrition prescriptions, stress management and resilience building, quitting smoking and smoking products, and evaluating sleep patterns.
• Comprehend the importance of promoting social connections, harnessing individuals' strengths, and using positive emotions such as gratitude and laughter as medicine to empower individuals to reach their optimal health and wellbeing
• Disseminate research findings in a range of formats to experts and the general population.
• Identify and formulate appropriate responses and intervention strategies to address nutritional and lifestyle issues, considering the public health and social policy contexts
• Apply knowledge of effective teamwork and communication skills to solve problems and achieve goals