Hello, and welcome to this course,
Nutrition for Health Promotion and Disease
Prevention. My name is Katie Ferraro, and
I am excited to be instructor for the next
six weeks. In this first week, we are
going to do an introduction to nutrition
science. The first lecture here is going
to be a course overview, just to give you
an idea of what we have in store and how
the course is laid out. First, let's talk
about what this course is about. This
course is focused on health promotion and
disease prevention. It is not a weight
loss program, and it is not going to be a
panacea for all of your health ailments.
Our course is evidence-based, meaning that
the recommendations that you'll see in the
class and the different concepts that
we'll talk about are those that have been
supported by peer review published
literature. So while we all certainly have
millions of different anecdotal
experiences about all the foods that we
eat and their potential effect on our
health, we're not going to focus on those.
We're going to focus on the evidence. The
class is geared towards those who are
working in the health fields, who are
interested in diets and disease. The class
is in no way a substitute for professional
medical advice. Each week we're going to
cover a new topic or disease entity, and
we'll have up to ten different video
lectures per week. And the intent there is
to kind of chunk out and divide up the
larger topic, for example heart disease,
into smaller manageable pieces like
essential fatty acids, and what role does
sodium and hypertension play on heart
disease. There'll be a quiz each week.
We'll have a number of peer reviewed
writing assignments, and then you are
welcome to participate in the optional
weekly discussion boards. If you
successfully complete the course, you will
receive a certificate at the end of the
six week class. The course is six weeks in
length, and the topics are as follows. In
the first week we're going to do an
introduction to nutrition science, Now, if
you've taken nutrition before, this will
probably serve as a review for you and it
might be a little bit too easy for you.
But for some students who might not have
ever taken nutrition, or if you haven't
taken nutrition for a long period of time,
this might be a helpful review for you.
We'll look at vitamins, minerals, fats,
carbs, protein, and a little bit about
determining your own individual nutrient
needs. In the second week, we'll look at
heart disease, followed by diabetes, the
certain types of cancer for which we know
a little bit about, diet and the
progression of, or the treatment of that
cancer, followed by a week of obesity and
weight management, and then lastly, we'll
finish up with some disorders of the GI
tract. A little bit about me, again my
name is Katie, and I'm an assistant
clinical professor of nutrition, at the
University of California, San Francisco. I
teach here, in the school of nursing, and
I work primarily with nurse practicioners,
to teach them how to do nutrition
counseling, and how to interpret and
analyze some of the studies, and the data
that we have about diet, as it pertains to
disease. I specialize in nutrition
education and curriculum development. And
I think nutrition is one of those topics
that translates very well to the online
arena, and I hope you'll find the same
thing. I have a Masters in Public Health
from UC Berkeley, and my specialty was in
public health nutrition. And I'm also a
certified diabetes educator and a
registered dietician. In addition to those
professional qualifications and
credentials, I personally enjoyed
traveling, running, and eating. What's the
expectation from you as the student for
this class? Students in this course are
expected, first and foremost, to be
respectful of each other and of the
instructor. I hope that you will be open
to new ideas and dietary practices. Some
of the concepts or topics that we talk
about can get a little controversial, and
there's no cut and dry, black and white
answer to many, many of these questions.
So you, while you will come in certainly
with your own personal ba ckgrounds,
beliefs and understandings of diet
disease, I do hope that you will listen to
some of the new ideas that I'll present,
as well as those that your classmates.
Present, as well as those that your
classmates will bring to the table. I hope
that you will have an understanding for
and a respect for the scientific process.
By the end of the class, we have two
primary student learning objectives. I
want you to be able to interpret data and
research that links diet with both disease
prevention and health promotion. And I
want you, if you work in healthcare, to be
able to recommend evidence based practices
for nutrition that fall within your own
scope of practice.
