Southampton. What's below includes news of an important WHO initiative in which you can take part, and reflections on leadership, and on the art as well as science of public health. But first:

Our columnists

For me it's a big pleasure to read the four columns we run, all written by Association members, since early last year. I hope it is a pleasure for you too, and if you don't read all of them, now's the time to get into the habit.

Start with Reggie Annan. Reggie is a young colleague of mine at Southampton University, which is how the idea of him writing a monthly column for our website began. I told him to go for it, and he has. He writes for Africa, as often as not from his travels, this month to Windhoek, Namibia. He is from Accra, Ghana. This month he writes about what 'food' means to the Ga, his tribe, and other Ghanaian tribes. The term does not mean what people outside African culture think it means, but refers specifically to the traditional staple food. Consequently, city dwellers in Accra, questioned by a foreign seeker after nutritional truth, may say that they have eaten no food that day, or even for several days, while actually they have consumed lots of sandwiches, burgers, soft drinks and biscuits, which they do not see as 'food'. Quite right too! But as Reggie indicates, this may well lead to very wrong conclusions about malnutrition. There are now plenty of people in Accra who are fat, who rarely eat 'food'. This is food (ha, ha) for thought...

Now please turn to Fabio Gomes. Fabio is one of the remarkable number of Brazilians who are active within our Association. He travels as much as does Reggie, but he usually writes from Rio de Janeiro. For me he is a romantic. His column regularly features Brazilian traditional food, which is celebrates with appropriate Brazilian poetry. It occurs to me that there's not much US or UK poetry that is devoted to the pleasures of the table – how sad, and how understandable, in countries where most food is processed and where the family meal is disappearing. Fabio's writing has a political side also, and it's interesting to know that in Brazil, and in other Latin countries, the word for 'policy' and for 'politics' is the same. As a citizen he is a leader among many others, in the war to check the invasion of his country and other Latin American countries of processed products made by or for transnational companies.

Now Claudio Schuftan, who I have admired for many years. As mentioned above, Claudio is originally from Chile, and he now lives in Vietnam. He is a leader of the People's Health Movement, and with his long-standing friend and colleague Urban Jonsson is a champion of human rights. Geoffrey Cannon, who edits all the columns, tells me that it's a struggle to stop Claudio writing about human rights every single month! Claudio has evidently got the point this month, for his column is a homage to Halfdan Mahler, director-general of WHO for 15 years, who was the mastermind of the Alma Ata Declaration Following Dr Mahler's address to the WHO World Health Assembly two years ago, the theme is primary health care for all, as the crucial, rational and sustainable way to ensure food and nutrition security. And yes, Claudio reminds us that this involves basic human rights. Claudio sent this month's column in draft to Halfdan Mahler in Switzerland, who has replied with a poem, which is included. So now we have a former director-general of WHO as a contributor.

Geoffrey Cannon. What can I say. Geoffrey and I got into harness together at the beginning of 2003, when I invited him to write what turned out to be 65 consecutive 'Out of the Box' columns for Public Health Nutrition, of which I was then editor-in-chief. Geoffrey now revels in being able to use strong design, pictures and colour, and to publish his ideas just days after they are written and reviewed. Plus these are the days of broadband and wi-fi available almost everywhere, and internet cafés, often operated by and for young people, in every main street in small towns and resorts. This month Geoffrey writes from Natal, the capital city of Rio Grande do Norte on the North-Eastern coast of Brazil where, he tells me, the daytime temperature was around 40 degrees (over 100 degrees in real money) but with an ocean breeze, and where yes, there are internet cafes managed by girls in Brazilian-style bikinis. You see how our columnists suffer in their work. Many colleagues of which Geoffrey is one have I think persuaded us all – well, most of us – that nutrition is a many-dimensioned discipline. In this and his next column, Geoffrey proposes that it's time to see nutrition from the point of view of the tropical South, with what he believes this implies. I tell him he should write a book about this. He says that he is.

Here is a word about the freedom and the discipline of our columnists. Like columnists everywhere, they are free to write what they want. But they do need to make what they write relevant to public health nutrition. I think it's fair to say that all four of our columnists 'push the envelope', and include plenty of ideas and conjectures for readers to consider and challenge. I welcome this, and will also welcome a lot more responses. We are also looking for a fifth columnist. (Yes, I see the joke here!). Another man is banned. We would much prefer her to be an Asian national, based in Asia, standing up for Asian issues. A monthly column of say 2,750 words, more or less, is a substantial commitment (as is a president's letter) but surely is worthwhile. Members from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Asian Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, elsewhere, we know you're there and reading our website: let's be hearing from you. Feel free to write to me in the first instance.

Preparing for the May WHO World Health Assembly

Now for a topic colleagues and I at Southampton University are specially committed to – nutrition in early life. At the last WHO World Health Assembly in May 2010, resolution WHA 63.23 on Infant and Young Child Nutrition was agreed. This urges member states to strengthen implementation of the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. The WHO Director-General was requested to develop a comprehensive implementation plan. A draft plan will be discussed at the next World Health Assembly this coming May. The final plan will be delivered the following year.

The outline plan and four background papers have now been prepared and are available. WHO wants comments now, before 21 February. To provide a response, please go to the WHO website (http://www.who.int/nutrition/EB128/en/index.html ).

The implementation plan addresses nutrition challenges; policy challenges; objectives, targets and time frame; and actions. Five key actions are to

• Create a supportive environment for the implementation of comprehensive food and nutrition policies, with particular emphasis on linking nutrition to relevant policies in other sectors (agriculture, social welfare, trade, environment, education, and local development, as well as health).
• Include all required effective health interventions with an impact on nutrition in national health and nutrition plans.
• Stimulate the implementation of non-health interventions (food security, reducing poverty, social inequalities, maternal education) that impact on nutrition.
• Provide sufficient human and financial resources (currently nutrition programmes receive less than 1 per cent of overall development assistance).
• Monitor and evaluate the implementation of policies and programmes.

The first background paper presents a situation analysis of nutrition policies and programmes, based on responses received from 116 countries. The second reviews effective nutrition actions, summarising what is known about health interventions that can improve the nutritional status of women and young children. The third is a model for preparation of country plans. The fourth is a framework for monitoring implementation, achievements, and use of resources.

Above the parapet

Sometimes I worry about whether I am taking too high a profile on our website. But I have now come to feel that my discomfort was really about coming out of my academic concrete tower and into the real messy world. As president my job is to help shape the vision and direction of the Association, and most importantly to motivate people to get involved. This all 'goes with the territory'.

As Reggie Annan says in his column this month, leadership is about standing up and showing a way forward. The Association is a broad spectrum of people engaged in many different sorts of work, who have come to public health nutrition from different paths. We are not a club for old white male academics. We have a duty to challenge and ask difficult questions, such as on the forces that shape the global food system. We also need to ask ourselves what our roles and responsibilities are, as professionals, and also as citizens and professionals.

To be truly professional we have to look both within ourselves and without to the wider world. Yes, we need to get more members engaged and involved, including as contributors to this website and to World Nutrition. We have gained an impressive global readership and recruited many new members because of the stances contributors and the Association itself have taken on important issues. We already have so many people already doing so much for the Association. So, readers who are not members, join us!

The science and art of public health

We also should be concerned and professionally self-critical about the fact that the lay public want to believe the findings of science and statements and claims made by scientists, but do not trust the information they receive. In our profession the Association has a key role to play in helping build to that trust. As our voice of reason and yes, common sense, we may be able to secure a more rational and valid discussion involving 'evidence and science', and also the media and the public.

We have rightly accepted that an evidence- based approach is required, but I believe we have taken this too far and in the wrong direction. It is too often indicated that unless 'evidence' comes from randomised controlled trials or other statistically high-powered interventions it does not count, or is not evidence at all. I don't think this was what was intended, and certainly in a public health context is wrong.

In the UK the definition of public health starts with the words: 'The art and science…' We do indeed need to be thoughtful and to use judgement, experience, and wisdom, when we make decisions about what is best to do to promote public health. We deal with situations that will always be uncertain. But we can still propose policies and actions likely to do good, and unlikely to do harm. All public policy is like this.

We also need to see bigger pictures, as does Carlos Monteiro in his brilliant commentaries in World Nutrition. Looking at all available evidence as a whole, it makes full sense to me to say that healthy dietary patterns are those that are based on foods as recognisable natural products, where as an example the sugar consumed is intrinsically part of the food, rather than having been extracted from cane, corn or beet and added to the food. As a professional I think expressing my judgement in this way is my responsibility and duty.

This after all is what happens every day when people visit their family physician. Most decisions family doctors make are not based on evidence from randomised controlled trials or such-like, and nor should they be, but from experience and common sense. Of course they make mistakes occasionally, and they certainly should have a proper training in nutrition (more of this later) but most do good job, and they are also subject to scrutiny and when necessary censure. For public health nutrition there is not such a professional approach. There should be.I repeat what I said last month: developing our profession worldwide is a key objective of our Association.