AMSA Orange Guide 2020

Healthy Communities
Healthy Communities is the newest member of AMSA Global Health
Projects. We advocate for the reduction of unhealthy environments
within our communities to prevent non-communicable diseases
(NCDs). We are interested in the lifestyle factors that determine
NCDs and the public health strategies that can prevent these
illnesses. Healthy Communities hopes to advocate, educate and
run projects across the country to get you involved in and inspired
about preventing and managing NCDs through their environmental,
cultural and lifestyle influences.
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Following the release of the EAT-Lancet report in January 2019 which called for the need for
an urgent global food systems transformation towards a ‘planetary health’ diet in order to
simultaneously address the growing epidemic of NCDs and threats posed by climate change,
we focused our work in 2019 on nutrition. We ran a highly successful sustainable cooking class
at AMSA Global Health Forum 1, partnered with a leading researcher to conduct a survey of
medical students’ perspectives surrounding nutrition education in medical school, established an
ongoing relationship with Doctors for Nutrition, delivered two inspiring, food-focused breakouts
at GHC19 and conducted a Change the Fads, Stop the Ads campaign calling for submissions of
parody ads to combat the flood of junk food advertising on our TV screens.
In 2020 we will continue to keep nutrition a strong focus. With the publication of our nutrition
in the medical curriculum early this year we are planning on conducting some strong advocacy
work surrounding the delivery of high-quality nutrition education to medical students. Following
on from our highly successful student-led cooking class in 2019 we would like to facilitate similar
sessions at 2020 AMSA events, as well as create a framework for Global Health Groups to run fun
and educational ‘culinary medicine’ sessions at their medical schools. Being a new committee
in our third year, a big focus in 2020 will be continuing to build our engagement and reach with
medical students across Australia.
We will be recruiting members for our subcommittee in February this year. If you’re frustrated by
Medicine’s reactionary approach to NCDs and you’re interested in learning more about the ways
we can prevent them, please consider applying to join Healthy Communities in 2020 - we would
love to work with you!
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