Category: Epidemiology

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over two billion people worldwide suffer from some form of malnutrition, whether undernutrition or micronutrient deficiencies. The nutrition surveillance process is a vital, ongoing system used to collect, analyze, and interpret nutrition-relevant data to inform public health decisions and improve population health outcomes.

According to a joint FAO/UNICEF/WHO expert committee, nutritional surveillance is defined as watching over nutrition to inform decisions that improve population health. The objectives of nutritional surveillance are critical for translating data into strategic actions and are more complex than simple data collection.

According to the World Health Organization, non-communicable diseases now account for 74% of all deaths globally, compounding the existing challenges of infectious diseases and injuries in low- and middle-income countries, a phenomenon known as the triple burden disease.

According to the World Health Organization, robust national nutrition surveillance is crucial for developing effective health policies. A core component of this surveillance is understanding the objectives of a dietary survey, which provides the critical data needed to assess a population's nutritional status and inform strategic public health decisions.

Food Frequency Questionnaires (FFQs) have been widely used in large-scale studies of nutrition and health since at least the 1980s, providing a crucial, low-cost method for estimating dietary intake over long periods. Despite the availability of other methods like 24-hour recalls, the FFQ's specific strengths offer significant benefits for capturing habitual eating patterns.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malnutrition—including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overnutrition—is a global concern affecting every country. The primary purpose of the dietary survey is to systematically assess food and nutrient consumption patterns within populations or individuals to address these and other nutrition-related issues.

According to numerous studies, the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) has been widely used in large epidemiological studies since the 1990s, becoming the most common method of dietary assessment used in epidemiology research. This tool is favored for its practicality in large cohorts, despite some limitations concerning accuracy.

According to the World Health Organization, unhealthy diets are a leading global risk to health. However, understanding precisely how dietary patterns affect long-term health is exceptionally difficult for researchers, presenting a multifaceted challenge that combines biological complexity with methodological limitations.

Affecting over one billion people with some level of insufficiency or deficiency, vitamin D is a major global public health concern. While milder cases are widespread, understanding the true prevalence and impact of severe vitamin D deficiency is crucial for targeting effective prevention and treatment strategies.

First identified in 1935, Keshan disease is a congestive cardiomyopathy with high mortality rates, particularly in certain rural regions of China. It is most prominently linked to a combination of dietary selenium deficiency and a mutated strain of coxsackievirus B.