• The doctor of Sciences of the George Washington University (USA), Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, presented the paper “Covid-19 and school feeding in Latin America: Adaptation strategies of nutritional programs in the first six months of the pandemic”, in the cycle of talks on food policy organized by GEPA and CEDER.

Within the framework of the cycle of talks organized by the Food Policy Studies Group (GEPA) and the CEDER of the Universidad de Los Lagos, the doctor of Sciences of the George Washington University (USA), Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, presented the paper “Covid-19 and school feeding in Latin America: Adaptation strategies of national programs in the first six months of the pandemic”.

The academic announced the preliminary results of the research “Changes in school feeding programs in Latin America as a result of the pandemic“, with the adaptations that these programs have undergone due to the closure of schools in the region.

The study was carried out with the support of an April 2020 report by the Food and Agriculture United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and UNICEF (How to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the food and nutrition of school children?), which specified the responses that have been made at the global and local levels regarding the pandemic, specifically, on the negative consequences on the nutrition of children and adolescents due to the suspension of school feeding programs.

Dr. Colón-Ramos said in her presentation that the objective of the research was to determine “what strategies have been put into practice from Covid-19 to mitigate food and nutritional insecurity in school and adolescent populations in Latin America.“

To this end, she explained, it was documented how the implementation strategies of the School Feeding Programs (EAPs) were modified during the Covid-19 pandemic in Argentina (Buenos Aires), Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru and Uruguay.

In this context, public documents were collected from official websites and social networks of the governments of the aforementioned countries and surveys were conducted with key informants, with the collaboration of the local network of researchers.

Among the main results, he pointed out that in Chile the individual basket covers a third of the nutritional needs per day required by basic and secondary education students and between 45 and 50 percent what preschoolers require. In general, she said that most countries “comply with the recommendations based on nutritional needs, considering that in Latin America there are problems of double malnutrition.”

It should be noted that the local network of researchers is made up of:

• USA and Puerto Rico:

Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, Sc.D. The George Washington University

Rebecca Zavala, BSc

Emma Creamer, BSc Candidate

• Costa Rica:

Rafael Monge-Rojas, PhD. INCIENSA

• Brazil:

Ana Clara Duran, PhD. Universidad Estadual de Campinas

Mariana Grilo, MPH Candidate

• Mexico:

Carolina Batis Ruvalcaba, PhD. National Institute of Public Health

• Colombia:

Diana Parra Pérez, PhD. Washington University in St. Louis

• Chile:

Jael Goldsmith Weil, PhD. CEDER, Universidad de Los Lagos

Florencia Olivares, MSc Political Science

The talk was moderated by the director of the Fondecyt Initiation Project N°1180717 “The policy of food policies”, of the Food Policy Studies Group (GEPA) and researcher of the CEDER of the ULagos, Dr. Jael Goldsmith Weil.

The summary of the presentation of the Dr. Uriyoán Colón-Ramos can be reviewed here