Current status of nutrition work in Chinese disease control institutions

OBJECTIVE To investigate the basic nutrition working status in Chinese CDCs. METHODS The questionnaire of nutritional working ability of CDC was designed for investigation. The questionnaire was filled in by all disease control institutions of 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps(excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). Data was inputted by each institution through a questionn aire-survey platform called 'wenjuanxing& apos; , and the quality control was carried out by the provincial CDCs according to their jurisdiction. RESULTS A total of 3150 valid questionnaires were collected. 35.97% of the institutions surveyed had never undertaken nutrition-related work, and only 4.19% of them had set up an independent department for nutrition-related work. The average number of people engaged in nutrition work was 2.5(P50=1.0); The average number of full-time staff was 0.2(P50=0.0). The average number of full-time staff in provincial, municipal and county CDCs was 3.6, 0.4 and 0.2, respectively. In terms of the nutrition work, by 2020 the China Nutrition and Health Surveillance and the National Food Nutrition Surveillance have covered 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. Besides Shanghai, Zhejiang and Fujian, provincial CDCs implemented the Nutrition Improvemeat Program for Compulsory Education Students in Rural Area. As to the scientific research, only 9.08% of the institutions have carried out nutrition-related projects in the past five years. Particularly, there were little nutrition-related scientific research funds for municipal and county disease control institutions, while 96.57% of the institutions do not have special funds for nutrition work. From 2015 to 2019, the proportion of the institutions that published nutrition-related papers, published nutrition-related books, won nutrition-related awards, and participated in the formulation of nutrition-related standards was 3.81%, 1.27%, 5.65% and 0.70%, respectively. With regard to the implementation of the six major actions of the National Nutrition Plan(2017-2030), only 29.81% of CDCs have organized and carried out related actions. CONCLUSION Disease control institutions are short of nutrition professional posts, professional personnel, nutrition work funds and scientific research investment, lack of regular nutrition work tasks. Therefore, the nutrition capacity of the CDCs needs to be strengthened, and more efforts will be needed to meet the requirements of the National Nutrition Plan(2017-2030) and the Healthy China Action(2019-2030)-Healthy Diet Campaign.