Wellness Circle: Dietary diversity associated with anemia
Anemia is a disorder associated with the reduction in the concentration of the iron levels that ultimately affects the supply of blood in the body. It is particularly common among women and school going children. Men and women develop iron deficiency through a poor diet, kidney, severe blood loss, and gut diseases. Dizziness, headache, hair fall, pale and dry skin are the most common symptoms of anemia. According to the article “Iron Deficiency Anemia: Prevalence in Children of Lahore ‘’ published in The Professional Medical Journal found that nutrient deficiency is one of the most common causes of anemia. Medical providers described the treatment for the underlying cause anemia with dietary changes and iron supplementation.
We made a plan that we want to increase iron rich foods in the daily diet of university students by bringing diversity to the dietary patterns. Moreover, we decided to create an awareness among undergraduate and graduate students about iron deficiency disease (anemia) and its symptoms in free webinars. We will facilitate the attendants by engagement with nutritionists and through distributing the free diet plans. It is a lot easier to take in iron rich foods in the right proportions by following the diet plans recommended by nutritionists.
Action Plan:
After 3–4 group discussions, we start by promoting the Wellness Circle among family, friends and batch mates through different social media platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram). The next step was to learn about the understanding of the targeted audience regarding the anemia through conducting surveys. The results clearly show the concern and opinions of the audience regarding anemia. We focused on arranging 2–3 meetings with nutritionists. The purpose of the interaction was to describe the idea behind the wellness circle, to coordinate and to invite them to the webinar. Moving forward we planned out the ways to convince and invite students to attend the webinar and the content that would be delivered. We will forward the invitations for the webinars in the form of flyers through social media platforms. The main focus will be on distributing the diet plans among attendants to help them in the best possible way.
Challenges:
It was difficult to get maximum responses while conducting surveys
It was difficult to gather audience on social media platforms
Timeline:
We started by marketing the wellness circle from 17th April on social media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) to define the effects of decrease in the levels of iron in the body. Furthermore, the conductions of surveys from 5th to 11th May helps us to understand the knowledge about anemia among people. We will conduct webinars from 22nd to 30th May in order to explain the importance of bringing dietary diversity in daily diet.
Task division:
The tasks are divided among group members in the following way
- Marketing and handling the Wellness Circle on the social media platforms was assigned to Awais Iftikhar, Waqas Zafar, and Mansoor Ahmed
2. Coordination with nutritionist was assigned to Muhammad Rizwan
3. Conduction of surveys before and after the webinars were assigned to Waqas Zafar
4. Carrying out the webinars and interaction with the audience will be handled by Muhammad Rizwan and Ali Akhtar
5. Blog writing and content creation related to webinars is assigned to Saba Fatima and Hamna Asad.
