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REPULSE BAY
A pair of dietetic interns spent the past month working with the community of Repulse Bay through the Manitoba Partnership Dietetic Education Program.

Dietetic interns Ashleigh Halpin, left, and Manon Roy enjoy a frosty afternoon in Repulse Bay earlier this month. - photo courtesy of Ashleigh Halpin

University of Manitoba interns Manon Roy and Ashleigh Halpin could only spend four weeks in Repulse due to a lack of accommodations.

Roy said she and Halpin were expected to do a community assessment of the nutritional education needs in Repulse.

She said they also had to plan nutrition interventions based on their findings.

"We implement these interventions and, in our case, we did a lot of different things," said Roy.

"We did taste testings in both community stores, showed day-care staff how to make a few healthy recipes, and went to Tusarvik School for a week of vitamin D and calcium education presentations.

"We also did some work at the health centre with the well baby program, and some cooking classes with the Canadian Prenatal Nutrition Program and the diabetes group.

"So, there's four major steps with the focus being on community nutrition."

Roy said she and Halpin will evaluate what they did, make suggestions for the future and state what they learned from their experience.

She said, basically, they have to show they're competent in the area of community nutrition.

"There's a lot of other components to the 10-month internship, so we do a lot of very different things.

"We all have to go through a community placement in a rural area, and there's always two interns chosen to come North.

"We go through a competition to be selected, so it's a big honour to be chosen to come here.

"We see it as a real privilege and a great learning opportunity."

Roy said the more a community gets to know them and what they can help with, the more enthusiastic people become and the more questions they have.

She said at that point, people want them to stick around and help.

"I find people, in general, still don't know what we do or why we're there.

"So part of our role is also to educate the public on what we can offer."

Roy said there's far too much junk food available in the North and not enough affordable healthy choices.

She said there have been significant price improvements on some items during the past year, but not enough people understand the value of healthier choices to both their overall health and their budget.

"We did price comparisons in Repulse between milk and pop, and it's about $2 cheaper to drink the same amount of a can of milk than a can of pop.

"The price of milk, vegetables and cheese has gone down during the past year, but it's not enough.

"Junk food is addictive and there's a lot of food insecurity in the North, meaning people don't have enough money to provide their families with enough food.

"A lot of people are going hungry in the North."

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