Leveraging Online Learning to Promote Systems Thinking for Sustainable Food Systems Training in Dietetics Education.

Educating and training a multisectoral food systems workforce is a critical part of developing sustainable, resilient, and healthy food and water systems. This paper shares perspectives from a working group of educators, learners, and food systems subject matter experts that collaborated over the course of a year to develop, pilot test, and evaluate two interactive webinar series with a multi-site cohort of dietetics interns and graduate students. The three-part webinar series format included a training webinar, a practice activity, and a synthesis webinar.

Strengthening national nutrition research: rationale and options for a new coordinated federal research effort and authority.

Background: The US faces remarkable food and nutrition challenges. A new federal effort to strengthen and coordinate nutrition research could rapidly generate the evidence base needed to address these multiple national challenges. However, the relevant characteristics of such an effort have been uncertain.

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Standards of professional performance for Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (Competent, Proficient, and Expert) in Sustainable, Resilient, and Healthy Food and Water Systems.

Sustainability is the ability of a system to be maintained over the long term. Resilience is the ability of a system to withstand disturbances and continue to function in a sustainable manner. Issues of sustainability and resilience apply to all aspects of nutrition and dietetics practice, can be practiced at both the program and systems level, and are broader than any one specific practice setting or individual intervention.

Aligning Food Systems Policies to Advance Public Health.

The involvement of public health professionals in food and agricultural policy provides tremendous opportunities for advancing the public's health. It is particularly challenging, however, for professionals to understand and consider the numerous policy drivers that impact the food system, which range from agricultural commodity policies to local food safety ordinances. Confronted with this complexity in the food system, policy advocates often focus on narrow objectives with disregard for the larger system.

A new vision for health promotion and nutrition education.

Increased integration and collaboration of health promotion and nutrition education professionals to effectively engage consumers, debunk nutrition and health information, and mitigate the effect of chronic diseases is the vision presented for success in the future. Current and optimal roles of educators are discussed in relation to societal trends and their inherent opportunities and barriers. Recommendations for strengthening the role of health promotion in settings where nutrition educators work are provided and include the need for strong academic preparation, field-based training, and continual professional development.