TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 03 October 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpubh.2022.961827 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Ana Maria Calderon De La Barca, Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), Mexico REVIEWED BY Francesco Tovoli, University of Bologna, Italy Ana Luisa Falcomer, University of Brasilia, Brazil *CORRESPONDENCE Rodica Siminiuc rodica.siminiuc@adm.utm.md † These authors have contributed equally to this work SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Public Health Policy, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health RECEIVED 05 June 2022 ACCEPTED 16 September 2022 PUBLISHED 03 October 2022 CITATION Siminiuc R and T . urcanu D (2022) Food security of people with celiac disease in the Republic of Moldova through prism of public policies. Front. Public Health 10:961827. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.961827 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Siminiuc and T . urcanu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Food security of people with celiac disease in the Republic of Moldova through prism of public policies Rodica Siminiuc 1 * † and Dinu T . urcanu 2† 1 Department of Food and Nutrition, Faculty of Food Technologies, Technical University of Moldova, Chi¸ sin ˘ au, Moldova, 2 Doctoral School of Technical University of Moldova, Chi¸ sin ˘ au, Moldova Food security is an important lever for the implementation of rights-based legislation, policies, and programs, while being a public health and socio-economic priority. Foodborne illnesses have a major impact on public health, and nutritional interventions are essential therapeutic strategies to combat them. Gluten ingestion has been linked to several clinical disorders, collectively called gluten-related disorders. The most serious of these is celiac disease. The only way to treat celiac disease is to stick to a gluten-free diet for life. Following a strict diet is also the only way to prevent the long-term consequences of the disease. Public policies are essential to ensure the food security of people with gluten-related disorders. The aim of the research is to assess the level of care for people with celiac disease in the Republic of Moldova, in terms of public policies, to ensure a sustainable sector that effectively satisfies the food security of people with disorders associated with gluten consumption. To assess the level of care for people with gluten-related disorders, the working algorithm was taken, with reference to global public policies in support of people with celiac disease, developed and validated by Falcomer et al., Focused on 6 items. The results of the study showed that the Republic of Moldova does not have adequate policy support to ensure food security for people with gluten-related disorders, which poses major challenges and, as a result, may increase the complications of these problems. KEYWORDS public policy, celiac disease, gluten free products, level of care, food security, Republic of Moldova Introduction The flexible concept of food security, which emerged in the 1970s in a time of global food crisis, has undergone multiple changes and interpretations, moving from a definition focused on food production to one focused on nutrition. Food security is considered to exist when all people always have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy life (1–4). Food security is a rather complex notion and focuses on four important dimensions, to which the fifth—sustainability—has subsequently been anchored (Supplementary Figure 1). Frontiers in Public Health 01 frontiersin.org