Current perspectives of the National Food and Nutrition Policy: in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction: The National Food and Nutrition Policy is marked by increasing implementation of actions, programs, and initiatives that seek to meet the needs and particularities imposed by the country's situation, the population's food and nutrition context, and respond to opportunities to build the work agenda. The General Coordination of Food and Nutrition of the Ministry of Health is responsible, as federal health management, for establishing the guidelines for implementing the Policy, the priorities for health and nutrition of the population, and for supporting states and municipalities in the implementation of actions, programs and initiatives within their sphere of action. Objective: To describe the main advances in the A&N agenda in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, based on the legal provisions approved at the federal level, and to point out future prospects. Development: Based on the description of the context and advances of actions, programs and agendas driven by the federal management of the Policy in the last two years, the perspectives of the policy and its advances are presented, as well as the challenges and opportunities for the coming years, in the context of the Unified Health System. Final considerations: The years 2020 and 2021 were strongly marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing impacts to the population's health and challenges for public health management. In the context of the food and nutrition agenda in the Brazilian Unified Health System, it was necessary to glimpse windows of political opportunity to strengthen the agenda.

Keywords

• políticas e programas de alimentação e nutrição. política nacional de alimentação e nutrição. atenção primária à saúde. sistema nacional de saúde. sistema único de saúde.