Nutritional profile of children and adolescents benefited by the Bolsa Família Program in Nova Lima-MG

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe the nutritional profile of children and adolescents benefited by the Bolsa Família Program in Nova Lima / MG. This is an ecological study with data from the Information Record of the Nutritional Status of Program Beneficiaries included in the Food and Nutrition Surveillance System provided by the SUS´s Department of Informatics. A total of 4,935 children and adolescents were found, of which 2,868 were female. It was found that 76.1% of the study population was classified in the Nutritional Status Index as eutrophic, 9.7% with nutritional risk (≥3rd percentile <10th percentile), 7.3% with risk of overweight (≥97th percentile), 5.5% with low weight (≥0.1 percentile <percentile 3rd) and 1.4 % with very low weight (<0.1 percentile). It is concluded that the majority of children and adolescents are eutrophic. There is a lack of supervision in the transfer of data, nevertheless, the Program achieves its purpose of assisting the most needy families and provides a better quality of life for the target public.