#munsi

Für Nürnberger Christkinder ohne Arienachweis!

My first first week of Internship started in the office meeting new people and our new work place. Me and my friend Baiba have been asked to start working on the part of the WHO appraisal tool which is the tool for obesity prevention programmes, projects, initiatives and interventions.

This tool was developed to assess good elements of design, monitoring, evaluation and implementation of preventive programmes, projects, initiatives and interventions that aim to counteract obesity and improve nutrition  and physical activity. The aim of the tool is to systematically assess the quality of the programmes

Portugal and other Europe countries have to fill out the document and answer to 43 questions which are consisted of four different parts such as questionnaire , main intervention characteristics (objectives, planned activities, target group, involved stakeholders), monitoring & evaluation (mainly indicators and measurements), implementation (participation of target group, performance and programme management).

The document with the answers must be submitted  with the deadline, after summer months the best answers of the EU countries will be selected and will be decided which type of activities can be used for prevention.

Me and my friend Baiba have been asked to answer to 7 questions out of 43 questions. Before start we had a consultation how the answers should look like and what is expected.

I used two documents in answering the questions in regards to childhood obesity:

Programme Obesity Zero (POZ) it is a community based intervention to address overweight primary school children from five Portuguese municipalities. Portugal is one of the countries having top obesity rates.

MUNSI - Intervention areas: Healthy School, Communication/Awareness, Research, Active City, Professional Health and Education Training, Family.

Requested questions to answer:

Is the intervention based on current scientific knowledge and/or theoretical models and/or previous experience from other projects?

Were existing (inter) national diet and physical activity guidelines taken into account during the development of the intervention?

Does the intervention also address environmental factors (i.e. factors beyond individual control)? 

Is the approach of the intervention designed to have a lasting effect on the risk factors?

Does the intervention aim to empower the target group(s)?

Describe how the outcome of the intervention was measured.

Has a pilot study been performed?

I also visited National Institute of Health 'Doutor Ricardo Jorge Institute' located in Lisbon Portugal. It is a big Institute having six departments:

Food and Nutrition Department

Infectious Diseases Department

Epidemiology Department

Human Genetics Department

Health Promotion and non Communicable Disease Prevention

Environmental Health Department

A short description about me 

Hi, my name is Lina and I am a Bachelor degree student in Global Nutrition and Health doing specialization Public Health Nutrition & Food Policy at Metropolitan University College, Copenhagen Denmark. I am the 4th semester student and it is my first Internship in Portugal during summer months July and August. I am looking forward to start my Internship!

How we found the place :)

Me and my friend Baiba decided to do Internship together and we started looking for a place together. We were not sure to which country we would like to go but we knew we would like to stay in Europe. We found the variety of the choices on Internet in regards to Internship, we contacted many companies in Spain, Portugal, Denmark and also Lithuania where I was born.

However, our teacher Charlotte Dahl provided some Internship ideas for 2014  with the contacts from different countries including Portugal. We discussed that Portugal might be a great opportunity in regards to our Internship and we should try to write an email to MUNSI. As I heard from friends Portugal is a great country for living especially in summer time where the weather is great, prices are low and the nature is beautiful! 

Likewise, our current Internship host replied to us after a couple of days, we arranged a meeting and then we met with her at our school since she collaborates with GNH and lives in Copenhagen. Therefore, we had meetings and telephone calls but it was no difficulties to communicate to each other and sign the papers.

I also assume it is still challenging to manage to find an Internship place during July & August months since majority of the companies/organizations are closed.

Internship place

MUNSI program has a focus on prevention tackling obesity for children and the aim of this program is to decrease the prevalence of childhood obesity in Portugal. MUNSI program coordinated by CEIDSS -  Center for Study and Research of Social Dynamics and Health -  congregate the municipality action, the initiative of University Professors and Researchers of National Institute of Health with institutional support.