Faculty of Public Health and Human Nutrition

The module prepares the student to be able to Describe policies linked to nutrition related problems in Rwanda, define criteria used to set Food and nutrition policies in Rwanda, explain nutrition policies in Rwanda and how they are implemented. It Describe how food and nutrition policies are made and driving forces, compare Food and nutrition policies in Rwanda to other countries, observe nutrition policies in Rwanda, adapt nutrition policies in Rwanda by considering different driving forces. Furthermore, this module will teach students to basically explain food quality assurance in small to medium scale enterprises and export-oriented enterprises, generally describe the global perspective of quality assurance with food legislations and implications, particularly in developing countries, describe basic principles of establishing and maintaining modern quality management systems in the food industry, discuss the concept of foodstuff legislations as applied to the food industry, be able to observe principles of Quality Assurance as far as food is concerned, be able to adapt Rwanda Food legislations for different types of foods, and successfully conducting different kinds of food inspection in any food processing industry or any food chain.

This module is concerned with nutritional requirements in different physiological states. The principles, to evaluate nutrient requirements and nutritional status of humans at individual level and as well as at population level. Upon the completion of this module, students should be able to:

·       Demonstrate an understanding of estimating (calculating) nutrient requirements for different physiological states (infancy, growth, pregnancy, lactation, etc).

·       Demonstrate an understanding of the techniques of evaluating human nutritional status

·       Demonstrate an understanding of relationship between food and health.

·       Provide advice on the obtaining the required nutrients in clients living area.

·       Develop interest in nutrition assessment to help people know their health status.

This course provides an overview of nutrition issues that affect pregnant and post-partum women, females in reproductive age, infants and children. It is a deep examination of behavioral, physiological and public health issues that have an impact on dietary and nutritional factors that support normal growth and development.

The content of this course focuses on early stages of the lifecycle starting from gestation, lactation, infancy, preschool, school age and adolescence. Topics in this course will or should include but not limited to:

-        Fetal programming hypothesis.

-        Growth and nutritional requirements.

-        Breast and formula feeding of infants

-        Infants weaning

-        Eating behaviors that lead to normal growth, growth faltering, and pediatric obesity

Food Technology module, empowers our students with competencies of manufacturing and preserving foods in order to extend their shelf life before, after processing, and distribution. Through this module, our students are able to prevent, control, or eliminate all kinds of hazards associated with each type of food for the ultimate objective of preventing product losses due to quality deterioration of harvested foods.

The module of Food Microbiology and parasitology has the objective of studying of microorganisms, which have both beneficial and deleterious effects on the quality, and safety of raw foods. It addresses concerns about food poisoning, food spoilage, food preservation, and food legislation. Furthermore, the module enables students understand pathogens in food product, or harmful microorganisms, that result in major public health problems worldwide and are the leading causes of illnesses and death.

This Course enables students understand nutrients got from food, how they are used by the body, and their roles in good functioning of our body.

Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is therefore, seen as a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. This module provides opportunities to examine the impact of multiple factors that contribute to the health of populations, known collectively as the social determinants of health, and to develop knowledge and skills in program planning for health promotion. Students will examine the values and principles that guide contemporary health promotion and its capacity to influence the determinants of health. They will develop skills in needs assessment, priority setting, designating targets for change, using evidence and theory to make intervention choices and establishing systems for program management. The roles played by partnerships, capacity building and participation will be explored, and the steps toward improving program sustainability examined. The areas of health promotion action that will also be examined will encompass, creating supportive environments, health education strategies, health communication techniques at the group and population level, and advocacy. The application of these to health challenges in diverse cultural and economic contexts will be explored

5. Learning Outcomes

Upon the completion of this module, students should be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

§  Demonstrate an Understanding o of principles of prevention and health promotion.

§  Distinguish between primary, secondary and tertiary preventive services.

• Identify and assess the quality of resources for self and patient education on behavioral modification strategies.
• Identify and develop strategies that address patient, physician, and systems-level barriers to delivery of preventive care.
• Define health promotion from differing perspectives and explain the principles that underpin contemporary health promotion;
• Describe and discuss a range of frameworks for promoting health and how they are used in health promotion programs;
• Critically reflect on the link between the social determinants of health and social equity, health inequities and the ethical project of health promotion;
• Describe the steps in comprehensive program planning as a basis for action to address health determinants;
• Identify the information sources that can be used to identify health needs, assess determinants and select targets for change;
• Demonstrate an understanding of priority setting and specification of goals, objectives and strategies based on a logic model;
• Demonstrate the use of evidence and theory in all stages of planning, including evaluation.
• Critically reflect on the uses of health education, community organisation, communication and social marketing strategies to achieve individual, social, and policy changes.

Skills and Competences

§  Design and implement a health promotion intervention to address community health problems

Attitudes

§  Help individuals and communities improve their health, by increasing their knowledge or influencing their attitudes.

Innovation in Nutrition is a course that aims to give students new communication techniques in nutrition education of the community in order to adopt healthy food choices and behaviors that result in the improvement of nutritional status of community members. the course also provides necessary knowledge to manufacture new functional foods that improve the health status of consumers. 

The aim of this module is to enable students develop research skills relevant to the health field. The module is further designed to facilitate students’ understanding of research and the research process through the development of a research proposal and ultimately to guide them towards conducting research at the Bachelors’ level under supervision. As such, it aims to foster an understanding of evidence based practice and research utilization.

This module will cover an overview of the research process and research methodology; research designs (qualitative and quantitative approaches); sampling methods and sample size, data collection procedures (methods and instruments); ethical issues involved in research, critiquing a research article and scientific writing.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module, the student should be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

·         Demonstrate an understanding of operational research concepts

·         Obtain a working knowledge of basic statistical concepts necessary for the analysis of quantitative data

·         Obtain a working knowledge of qualitative data analysis

·         Develop scientific writing skills

Skills and Competences

·         Choose a research  topic and write its background and problem statement

·         Design and develop own research proposal attending to the various elements of the research process

·         Choose the appropriate research design for own proposed research

Attitudes

·         Identify and attend to the ethics involved in own proposed research

This module aims at familiarizing students to population theories as well as to the complexities of interdisciplinary nature of population analysis. The module introduces students to the basic techniques of formal (statistical) demographic analysis. All demographic sub-fields will be covered at a basic level: marriage, fertility, mortality, population growth, migration, as well techniques and purpose of standardization.

This course of nutritional pathology will cover six chapters.

This module serves as an introduction to the field of maternal and child health, focusing on major issues affecting the health and well-being of children and families over the life span. Upon successful completion of this module, students should be able to

• Describe the major causes of morbidity and mortality affecting women of reproductive age and children in resource-limited settings
• Analyse the underlying determinants of women's and children's health using a life-cycle approach
• Explain the links between gender and women's and children's health, and critically assess public health policy and programs from a gender perspective
• Identify effective public health interventions to improve the health of women and children in resource-limited settings and critique the evidence for these interventions
• Demonstrate an understanding of the challenges impacting on access, quality and delivery of services and public health programs in resource-limited settings and describe effective approaches to overcome these challenges.

• Analyse the underlying determinants of women's and children's health using a life-cycle approach
• Advocate for the improvement of women and children health

The module is a non-clinical module aimed at enabling students to understand sexual and reproductive health issues and related health promotion programmes. The module is designed to provide an understanding of sexual and reproductive health and population issues as well as the knowledge necessary for understanding reproductive health interventions. At the end student should be able to

• Demonstrate an understanding of the biological and  physiological aspects of human sexuality
• Examine psychosocial aspects of human sexuality, to include discussion of gender roles, attraction and love, sexual expression, sexual orientation, and relationship development
• Examine the historical, theoretical and contemporary perspectives on human sexuality.
• Explain the health and other benefits of Family Planning for mothers, children and families

• Apply the knowledge of reproductive anatomy and physiology to client counseling  in matters of reproductive health
• Provide RH education and counseling services that are appropriate for Adolescents and that relate to normal adolescent development, sexuality and psychosocial, and health care needs of adolescents.
• Provide education and counseling to individuals and groups about the consequences and prevention of RTIs/STIs and HIV/AIDS.
• Design and implement sexual and reproductive interventions to address the community needs in this area.

• Develop a commitment to understand and help people to have healthy sexual and reproductive lives.

 The module introduces students to the basic techniques of formal (statistical) demographic analysis. All demographic sub-fields will be covered at a basic level: marriage, fertility, mortality, population growth, migration, as well techniques and purpose of standardization.

Upon the completion of this module, students should be able to;

• Demonstrate an understanding of selected applied issues related to population dynamics.
• Describe demographic issues embedded in the main theories, concepts and principles.
• Use a range of routine information sources and surveillance system to support Public Health activities.
• Analyze data about population in specific geographic areas presented in graphs in order to assess the health status, health inequalities, determinants and different needs to support prioritization of action
• Appreciate the usefulness of demographic knowledge to understand Public Health issues.

At the end of the module the student will be able to:     

1. Explain DNA; RNA; proteomics and detection systems; bioinformatics; genetics; SNPs; model systems; and ethics.

2. Explain Nutrigenomics (Implications of the Human Genome Project for understanding gene –diet interaction, Genetic variations, nutrition, preventive medicine and personalized diets).

3. Highlight nutrient sensors (regulation of gene expression; lipids as ligands for nuclear receptors: PPAR, RXR, SREBP; glucose and insulin signaling; gene–diet and gene –gene interactions).

4. Understand genomics from nutritional perspective (Principles, tools, polymorphisms, genotypes, phenotypes).

5. Explain genetic individuality and dietary responses (Single-nucleotide polymorphisms and Bioinformatics in Nutritional Sciences).

6. Highlight methods to study cellular responses to changes in the nutritional environment: Functional nutrigenomics I: Transcriptomics and Proteomics (Expression microarrays, data analysis, examples on application)

7. Discuss functional nutrigenomics II: Methyl donors and Epigenetics

8. Explain nutrient-gene interaction and complex diseases (Genetic susceptibility to diets, Models; Biomarkers; Evidence-based nutrition and Epidemiology)

9. Elucidate folic acid and homocysteine metabolism –choline, MTHFR polymorphisms

10. Comprehend dietary lipids, lipoprotein responses to diet and genetics of atherosclerosis (polymorphisms of genes involved in lipid/cholesterol biosynthesis and transport)

11. Elucidate metabolic Syndrome (obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia; genetic influences and molecular biomarkers for preventive therapies)

12.Understand genetic and environmental influences on cancer prevention (polymorphisms of cancer genes, regulatory enzymes, nutrients as cofactors and antioxidants; DNA methylation, histones and acethylation)