*Medicina y Salud Pública* magazine spoke with Ángela Díaz, Executive Director of Nutriendo Puerto Rico, and Julia Corvalán, Global Operations Manager for the *Semáforo* (Traffic Light) initiative at the Fundación Paraguaya. Together, they announced a partnership to implement a technological tool on the island—a nutritional and socioeconomic self-assessment instrument—that has already been utilized over one million times worldwide.
The conversation began with a premise frequently circulated among public health experts: in Puerto Rico, no one goes to bed hungry. The real problem, both specialists agreed, lies in the quality of the food consumed and how that translates into chronic disease.
The numbers confirm this. According to Díaz, "20% of Puerto Ricans have diabetes," and the population classified as overweight or obese hovers around 70%. "We see it in the statistics regarding chronic diseases; we see it in the rates of overweight and obesity present in Puerto Rico; and we see it constantly in the ever-increasing number of people receiving diagnoses directly linked to their dietary habits," noted the Executive Director of Nutriendo Puerto Rico.
One of the project's central pillars is to broaden the traditional definition of poverty. For years, community organizations have associated food insecurity almost exclusively with a lack of financial resources.
Díaz explained that the partnership with the Fundación Paraguaya enabled them to identify "a tool that addresses the issue of poverty, but does so through its multiple dimensions"—where the determining factor is not necessarily economic income, but also educational attainment, place of residence, and living conditions.