Third meeting of the WHO Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Policy Actions

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 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, it is planned to hold a series of virtual meetings in 2021 to progress the work of the NUGAG with a view to finalize pending guidelines, starting with the first virtual meeting (i.e. the 3rd meeting) to be held for two hours each day on 8, 10 and 12 March 2021.

Objectives and expected outcomes

The objectives of the third meeting are to:

Review the outcomes of the systematic review assess the certainty of the evidence;
Formulate the recommendations on school food and nutrition 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 third meeting are, therefore, draft recommendations (including rationale and remarks, as required) on school food and nutrition policies.