Abstract

HENRIQUE, Flávia Conceição dos Santos; LIRA, Pedro Israel Cabral; SANTOS, Sandra Maria Chaves dos  and  ANDRADE, Sonia Lucia Lucena Sousa de. Trends in graduate courses on the evaluation of public food and nutrition programs in Brazil, 1980-2004. Cad. Saúde Pública [online]. 2007, vol.23, n.12, pp. 2972-2981. ISSN 0102-311X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-311X2007001200018.

In recent years, public policy evaluation in Brazil has become a strategic tool for improving the performance of public action, capable of contributing effectively to social welfare. Despite this recognition, evaluative practice has still not been incorporated into the programs' "life cycle", especially in the social area. Programs that lack significant evaluative practice include those related to food and nutrition. This article thus aimed to characterize the field of evaluation of public food and nutrition interventions in graduate studies programs in Brazil. The study focused primarily on theses and dissertations from 1980 to 2004, converging on the functioning of interventions with a predominance of documental research and case studies. Analytically, the principal thematic categories in these theses and dissertations have shifted from a more biological focus to the socio-political dimension.

Keywords : Nutrition Programmes; Public Policies; Health Postgraduate Programs.