Power, Privilege, and Inequity Resources for a Nutrition Class (2021)
Tara Coffin
This is a personal piece I did several years ago, focusing on the impact privilege has in the context of perinatal nutrition and access to human milk: “Four Bags of Milk”
These concepts are incredibly relevant to Nutrition 101, and provide a vignette of sorts that illustrates how the social determinants of health come into play, and thus, power and privilege as well. Following a year of public health and environmental crises, the importance of access to human milk as an issue of safety and sovereignty, is critical. Along those lines of thinking, I believe this particular public health issue provides a lens to see how these issues play out in real-time, and what systems inequities in power and privilege play. I can see building this example into a unit in my Nutrition class, using some of the following resources which speak more to this point:
- The Black Health Matters website includes some great discussion points and actionable steps that would fit well in a variety of public health-themed classes.
- The Global Hunger Index also addresses the issue of food access and sovereignty
- This resource from the Albuquerque Area Southwest Tribal Epidemiology Center takes a deep dive into food sovereignty. I absolutely LOVE this resource and am really excited at the ideas this prompts for my class!