About us
Our aims and objectives
The World Public Health Nutrition Association (WPHNA, or the Association) is the voice of public health nutrition as taught and practiced worldwide. It is created at a critical time in history, when the need for collective action in the public interest is most urgent and pressing. We promote and strengthen public health nutrition, as a profession and discipline with responsibility to understand, protect and improve nutrition-related population health and well-being.
With our members, we encourage policy-makers and decision takers, at all levels from global to local, to promote equitable and sustainable access to adequate, enjoyable, appropriate and nourishing food. This is essential for population health and well-being, and also for social, cultural and economic integrity, and to conserve the living and physical world.
We are part of the professional movement now committed to advocate and ensure effective public health policies and actions. Our work includes accumulation and assessment of evidence, and also judgement and action when evidence is adequate, especially in urgent and critical situations. We confirm that good health is a human right, and we follow ethical principles, including those of transparency, equity and respect.
We work to ensure a well trained, resourced and organised profession, aware of the environmental, social, political and economic as well as the biological and personal determinants of disease, health and well-being, and what these imply for research, advocacy, policy, and action.
Our nature and origins
The Association is an individual membership organisation. Subject to our rules, we are open to all within and also associated with the public health and nutrition professions and organisations who support our aims and objectives, and who are committed to work towards their fulfilment.
The need for the Association was agreed at the first World Public Health Nutrition Congress held in Barcelona in 2006, when the first one hundred founder members from forty countries were nominated. Formally incorporated and inaugurated in May 2008, the Association is a registered charity, and is affiliated with the International Union of Nutritional Sciences.
Join us, work with us, and help to make our world a better place.
