Department of Community Nutrition

Community nutrition encompasses a broad set of activities designed to provide access to a safe, adequate, healthful diet and create changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior either individually or in small groups within a community setting. These activities include nutrition education, nutrition or health promotion, food programs, supplementation programs, preventive programs, local policy analysis and development. The data derived from the application of epidemiologic techniques should lead to a better comprehension of the host-diet-environment relationship and the links between diet, human health and the nutritional outcomes. The utilization of the resulting data should provide evidence that can support public health and nutrition recommendations from policy levels to its translation into the programs and projects at the operational level.

The Department is composed of nine faculty members (including four Professors, three Associate Professors, and two Assistant Professors).

Various fields of Community Nutrition are:

Childhood Nutritional Status, Nutritional Epidemiology, Obesity, Sarcopenia in Elderly, Food Security, Nutrition in PHC, Food Safety, Food and Nutrition Policy Making, Planning and Management, Nutritional Status Assessment, Food Consumption, Dietary Pattern, Dietary Diversity, Nutrition Education, Food Fortification,  Nutritional and Molecular Epidemiology, Gene Environment Interactions in Relation to Obesity,  Genetic/Nutrition Epidemiology of Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Complications,  Lifestyle/Diet Intervention in Prevention of Obesity.

Faculty members in Community Nutrition are concerned with:

• Understanding the food choice behaviors of individuals, families, and groups and the contributions of food systems to those behaviors,
• Understanding the distribution and causes of nutritional disparities in populations using tools from epidemiology, social sciences and policy analysis, and;
• Designing, implementing and evaluating nutrition interventions, including nutrition education and nutrition-related policies.

Mission Statement

Department of Community Nutrition is a pioneer department with a mission centered on promotion, research and education in nutritional status, food security, dietary pattern, restoration and enrichments, food programming and related problem in society.
By encouraging and supporting innovative research, this department aims to enhance understanding of nutritional problem in community and to improve the search for primary diagnosis and preventive possibilities.

Goals

• To determine the nutritional status of people using different methods including nutrient intake estimations to determine the daily foods intake, 24-hours food recalls, 24-hours food records, dietary adequacy and food frequency questionnaires as well as some other similar methods might be considered.
• To assess the health and growth status, anthropometric measurements in different age and gender groups can be applied. As part of such measurements, weight/ height, Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC), Hip/Waist Circumference and skin-folds (using caliper) can be applied.

The routine test performed in the laboratory includes:

• Measuring the weight, height of people
• Measuring the body composition using bio-electrical impedance
• Measure skin-fold thickness using calliper
• Measuring the weight of food items using sensitive scales

Research Centres and Laboratories

The results of studies about Food and nutrition security have shown that Iranian rural and also urban Population suffer from nutritional insecurity.

Using an Indirect method to estimate the prevalence of food insecurity in Iran considered energy intake < 80% of recommended allowance as food insecurity. It showed that about 20% of Iranian Population is hungry as reported in REY city. Finding of some other studies have also shown that as much as 50% of people suffer from Food/nutrition insecurity. In two cities of Shiraz and Yazd, prevalence of food insecurity was reported as much as 44% and 30.5% respectively. Therefore, in order to solve the nutritional problems of hunger and food insecurity, nutritional interventions should be considered.

Faculty Members

Contact person

Dr.Khadijeh Mirzaei, PhD

Assistant Professor

Telephone Number: +98-21-88955569 (124)

Fax Number: +98-21-88955569