Dates:
14 December 2022 – first session
15 December 2022 – second session
19 December 2022 – third session
20 December 2022 – fourth session
Scope and purpose
The WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS), through the work of the Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Policy Actions, is providing evidence-informed WHO guidance on effective policy measures to support Member States in developing enabling food environment to promote healthy diets and nutrition. Priority policy measures include nutrition labelling policies, policies to restrict marketing to children, fiscal and pricing policies and school food and nutrition policies.
Providing such guidance contributes to efforts to achieve global goals and commitments to improve health and promote safe and healthy diets, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the Global Nutrition and NCD targets adopted by the 65th and 66th World Health Assemblies, respectively; the commitments made at the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) in 2014, and the goals of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025) declared by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in April 2016. The work contributes to achieving the commitments of the Political Declaration of the third high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, which reaffirms the importance to “promote and implement policy, legislative and regulatory measures aiming at minimizing the impact of the main risk factors for non-communicable diseases, and promote healthy diets and lifestyles” (A/RES/73/2). The work of the NUGAG Subgroup on Policy Actions also supports the achievement of the ‘triple billion’ goal set up by the 13th General Programme of Work (2019 – 2023), including one billion more people enjoying better health and well-being.
The first meeting of the NUGAG Subgroup on Policy Actions took place in December 2018, during which participants discussed and finalized the scope, PICO questions and priority outcomes to guide the undertaking of the systematic reviews and subsequently to formulate the recommendations for the guidelines on nutrition labelling policies, policies to restrict marketing to children and fiscal policies. The second meeting of the NUGAG Subgroup on Policy Actions took place in December 2019 during which participants reviewed the draft systematic reviews and formulated draft recommendations on nutrition labelling policies, policies to restrict marketing to children and fiscal policies. Participants also discussed and finalized the scope, PICO questions and priority outcomes to guide the undertaking of the systematic reviews and subsequently to formulate the recommendations for the guideline school food and nutrition policies.
The Safe, Healthy and Sustainable Diet Unit (CC Healthy Diets) of the new Department of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS) established in January 2020 as part of the WHO’s transformation process serves as the Secretariat of the NUGAG Subgroup on Diet and Health and also the NUGAG Subgroup on Policy Actions. The NUGAG is generally expected to meet physically, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of virtual meetings were held in 2021 to progress the work of the NUGAG with a view to finalize pending guidelines. The first virtual meeting (i.e. the 3rd meeting) was held on 8, 10 and 12 March 2021 during which participants reviewed the draft systematic reviews and formulated recommendations on school food and nutrition policies, the second virtual meeting (i.e. the 4th meeting) was held on 5, 6 and 9 July 2021 during which participants reviewed the draft systematic reviews and formulated recommendations on policies to protect children from the harmful impact of food marketing, and the third virtual meeting (i.e. the 5th meeting) was held on 13, 14 and 17 September 2021 during which participants reviewed the draft systematic reviews and formulated recommendations on fiscal policies to promote healthy diets. The fourth virtual meeting (i.e. the 6th meeting) is now planned to be held for three hours each day on 14, 15, 19 and 20 December 2022.
Objective and expected outcomes
The objectives of the sixth meeting are to:
- Review the outcomes of the systematic review on the effectiveness of nutrition labelling policies and assess the certainty of the evidence;
- Formulate the recommendations on nutrition labelling policies and determine the strength of recommendations, through:
- taking into consideration the certainty the evidence and detailed contextual factors, such as the balance of evidence on benefits and harms, values, resource implications, priority of the problems, equity and human rights, acceptability and feasibility, as assessed through an addition review;
- Review and identify implications for future research, taking into account on-going research and any existing controversies; and
- Review implications or possible challenges for implementation of the guideline.
The expected outcomes of the sixth meeting are, therefore, draft recommendations (including rationale and remarks, as required) on nutrition labelling policies.