Public Health Nutrition is part of public health system which seeks the advancement and maintenance of the optimum nutritional health condition of the general populace. It is viewed as a type of discipline responsible in promoting, protecting, improving and understanding the totality of efforts dedicated at improving the health and well-being of the whole population. Because nutrition is deemed an essential aspect of the healthy condition of the people, it becomes the duty of public health nutrition profession to promote the unbiased access to adequate, proper and nourishing supply of food. This also includes the concept of sustainability of the nourishing food supply for the generations to come.

Most countries consider it a right for everyone to have good health. This prompted their respective governments to put forth public health nutrition programs which are carefully tailored to meet the needs and interests of the general population including the high risk subgroups within it. To protect the vulnerable or high risk groups, it becomes rule of public health nutrition to advocate public health policies and ensure that they are being carried out into action. Governments must ensure this to attain transparency and equity and in the process accord to those groups the respect that they deserve and their right to protection in matters of health and wellness.

The efforts directed to putting shot-in-the arm on public health nutrition involves diverse forms of programs that will afford easy and continuous access to the nutrition information and education, health care, food resources as well as the policy on caring for the environment. Of the programs thus mentioned, prioritization of nutrition problems are being undertaken to ensure that focus will be had. When problems are prioritized, the concerned departments are able to coordinate any formulated strategies that will reach and influence the people and the people’s organizations which exist in a community. This will help in proper organization and integration of public health nutrition efforts to ensure that benefit will redound to the general welfare of the people.

Yet another goal of public health nutrition is disease prevention and health promotion. In the attainment of this goal, the community looks for the hand of the state and its health agencies. A local health agency for instance, employs a public health nutritionist. This nutritionist is responsible in ensuring that people understand fully well how food and nutrients can shape the wellness and the kind of lifestyle that a person follows. Insofar as disease prevention and health promotion are concerned, it is not amiss to state that it is in this way that nutrition will cover both science and education. Finally it is in this aspect that public health nutrition can effectively be utilized as a tool in addressing a multitude of nutrition problems and become a vehicle in avoiding service gaps on the part of either the government or its local health agency.