JAMAICA is among four Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries that have been chosen to conduct social marketing training and technical assistance to reduce daily salt intake.

The other countries participating in the project are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The project is being led by the Pan American Health Organisation Salt Smart Consortium, acting as the secretariat, supported by Healthy Caribbean Coalition.

Technical support is being provided by the University of South Florida and the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Social Marketing and Social Change.

St Vincent’s Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment said it has formed the SVG Salt -Smart Coalition, a multisectoral group made up of various stakeholders from public and private sectors and NGOs that will be responsible for conducting the project.

Specifically, the aim of the project is to provide strategies to encourage mothers of primary school-aged children to cook with less salt, by low -salt products, so as to prepare their children to succeed in the 21st century free from the host of chronic diseases such as hypertension and strokes.

“In our Caribbean setting, in most cases the mother is responsible for food selection and preparation for the family, and, therefore, is in a very good position to change salt consumption habits in the home. The mother can influence the amount of salt that her children eat at home and at school,” theproject organisers said.

One of the marketing tactics in this project would be to focus interventions on changing social norms, governmental and organisational policies, and aspects of the environment — for example, access to low -salt alternatives — that impact individual decisions about salt consumption, especially in the home and school.

The project was officially launched at the Kingston Health Centre earlier this month during World Salt Awareness Week 2016, under the theme ‘Reduce Salt Healthier Life’.