Abstract

Community nutritionists draw upon theories from the social sciences to improve their work in health promotion and disease prevention. Social science theories are sets of concepts that provide systematic explanations that can predict events or situations, and are classified into several paradigms and worldviews. these theories interact with research and practice around the subject matter of community nutrition. Use of these theories provides benefits in community nutrition by helping to organize thinking about nutrition topics in ways that are useful for assessing, understanding, intervening, and evaluation community nutrition issues. Community nutrition researchers and practitioners can be choose from many available social science theories by evaluating assumptions, scope, applicability, complexity, effectiveness, and other aspects of the theories. Awareness and use of social science theories should enhance the development of community nutrition.

• Keywords: community nutrition; social science; theory; model; paradigm