Field Placement: Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization -- Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute
Location: Mona, Jamaica
Preceptor: Dr. Ballayram
Student Name: Dean Garrett
Year: 2002

This internship was conducted in summer 2002 at the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), a specialized unit of the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization that is located on the campus of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. The internship was supervised by Dr. Ballayram, a food economist at CFNI who is responsible for costing nutritional diseases and for food security analysis/strategies designed to combat food insecurity in the Caribbean region. The objectives of the internship were to develop a model of the relationship between obesity and mortality, to propose an econometric model for costing obesity and its co-morbidities, and to investigate the prevailing standards of food safety as they operate in the context of the Codex Alimentarius. Obesity and its contribution to premature mortality, as well as its overall costs (financial, emotional and psychological), are of high priority in Jamaica because of the high and increasing prevalence of obesity in the Caribbean region. In some countries, including Barbados, Jamaica and Saint Lucia, the prevalence of obesity among men ranges from 7-21 %; among women it ranges from 22-48 %. Not only is obesity a health problem in of itself but it is directly linked to a number of other health problems termed co-morbidities. These co-morbidities include heart disease, hypertension, stroke, Type II diabetes mellitus, gall bladder disease, some types of cancer and osteoarthritis. Similar as to what pertains in the United States of America, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and cancer are the leading causes of death in Jamaica and have been over the past 10 years. Thus, the CFNI has undertaken to research the epidemic of obesity in the Caribbean focusing on Jamaica initially, with the purpose of informing Caribbean governments of this emerging condition that threatens to erode any gains in health that the region has experienced in the past 50 years. Furthermore, obesity and its co-morbidities threaten to drain the scarce resources of Caribbean countries that are already financially-strapped. Food safety in Jamaica, and by extension other Caribbean countries that are involved in tourism and food export, is important in light of the regulations of the World Trade Organization, as well as in the context of the Codex Alimentarius of the World Health Organization, as it pertains to local consumption of prepared food and the exportation of processed foods to developing and developed countries. The main aim of the research on food safety in Jamaica therefore, was to research what programs, procedures and legislation manufacturers/food processors have put in place for meeting the safety and hygienic standards for food as spelled out in the Codex Alimentarius of the World Health Organization.

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