Nutrition results of the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Survey 2006.

I nformation on the nutritional status and health of a population allows us to better understand current problems related to all forms of poor nutrition, from deficiencies in macro-and micronutrients to an imbalance in the intake and expenditure of energy. An analysis of evidence on a population's nutritional status can assist the design and implementation of prevention strategies and interventions. National nutrition surveys have been conducted in Mexico since 1988, making it possible to determine the nutritional status of the Mexican population based on national probabilistic surveys of rural and urban strata in different regions of the country. 2006) –coordinated by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública– included nutritional factors as well as certain aspects of health previously studied in the National Health Surveys. The ENSANUT 2006 is more extensive than previous surveys, covering a larger range of health problems, broadening the populations studied in previous surveys, and including state-level representative samples for certain health problems that provide useful information for decision-making on the state level. Disseminating research results is essential in order to inform the development of health policies and programs. The results of the ENN88 and the ENN99 were disseminated by various means, in particular, through the Salud Publica de México (SPM) supplement, " 1999 National Nutrition Survey. " 1 Likewise, several important steps have been taken to disseminate the results of the ENSANUT 2006, such as publishing reports related to general results 2 and those relevant to nutrition, 3 as well as state level results 4 and those related to Mexico's border regions. 5 The current issue of SPM is a contribution to the efforts to disseminate the ENSANUT 2006, in this case with a series of scientific articles that analyze, in detail, problems relevant to nutrition and health in Mexico, ranging from malnutrition to obesity, overweight and eating disorders. All of these articles have been subject to high technical standards and a strict peer review process, and many use information not only from the ENSANUT 2006 but also from the ENN99 and ENN88 in order to estimate tendencies over time for different nutritional problems. This issue includes an editorial written by Mauricio Hernández Ávila that emphasizes the role of health and nutrition information in decision-making. The issue begins with an original article by González de Cossío et al. that compares malnutrition estimates from the past two decades using various international reference standards. This work is an …