Sylvie is the manager of the dynamic Research and Data Analysis team in the Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion at Health Canada. Her team members, gather, assess and synthesize the best available evidence to support the development of healthy eating policies, guidance and promotion activities. They help advance the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) in collaboration with Institute of Medicine (US). They also contribute to the development of Canadian Health Surveys working with Statistics Canada and are analysing and interpreting national nutrition survey data. Sylvie strongly believes that team work leads to success. « Aucun de nous ne sait ce que nous savons tous, ensemble. » Euripide
The 2019 Canada’s Food Guide (CFG) provides recommendations on healthy food choices (“what to eat”) and also on eating behaviors (“how to eat”). Assessing alignment to the CFG in a consistent manner with practical and validated tools is important to support empirical research focused on CFG recommendations as well as population-based monitoring and surveillance efforts in Canada. Furthermore, these tools could become invaluable in assessing associations with health outcomes. In collaboration with experts in the field, Health Canada is working to develop and validate three tools to measure alignment to the 2019 CFG recommendations: 1- A scoring tool (index) using 24 hour recall data for the “what to eat” recommendations 2- A questionnaire (screener) for the “what to eat” recommendations 3- A questionnaire (screener) for the “how to eat” recommendations In this session, the development process of the index measuring adherence to the “what to eat” recommendations along with its validation methods and results will be presented. The development process and validation methods for the screeners designed to assess adherence to the “what to eat” and “how to eat” recommendations will also be presented followed by a discussion of next steps.