Community Nutrition Educators

The ideal community nutrition educator candidate has experience as an intern, volunteer, or part-time worker at a public health agency or organization that provides nutrition education to underserved communities.

Community nutrition educators must have superior oral and written communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills because they spend the majority of their time talking one-on-one with clients, leading nutrition workshops and other educational events, teaching classes in test kitchens, writing copy for brochures and social media posts, communicating virtually with clients and colleagues via Zoom, and recording content for YouTube and other social media channels. They also need to be able to gear their presentations, videos, and publications for different audiences. For example, a casual, fun, and more streamlined approach is required when working with children and teens, as opposed to adults (who may just want the facts). If possible, educators who work with non-English speaking clients should learn the language (such as Spanish) of that group. If they are not fluent in a foreign language, they must be able to effectively work with translators when providing nutrition education.

Other important traits for educators include empathy; compassion; patience; kindness; friendliness; strong, problem-solving, organizational, time-management, and leadership skills; an excellent work ethic; punctuality; and the ability to work both collaboratively and without supervision, when necessary. Finally, educators must be willing to continuously learn about nutrition and health topics, as well as have knowledge of hunger, poverty, and food and nutrition insecurity issues.