BAPEN

Council

BAPEN policy and business are directed by its Governing Council. Members of BAPEN Council are all full members of BAPEN and include elected representatives of the Core Groups and Associate Societies of BAPEN, the Chairs of the Standing Committees and the elected members of the Executive Team. Members of council are usually appointed annually and serve a maximum term of three years.

BAPEN Council meets at least twice a year and has the following responsibilities:

• To approve or reject applications for membership
• To maintain a list of all BAPEN members
• To elect the Executive Officers of BAPEN
• To appoint a BAPEN representative to the European Nutrition Society (ESPEN)
• To appoint standing committees and determine their terms of reference, duration and composition
• To select members of BAPEN for special acclaim, including the BAPEN roll of honour, Honorary Life Membership and the invitation to become a member of BAPEN faculty.

BAPEN Council receives regular reports from the Executive Team, the Standing Committees and Associate Societies and helps to support and direct their work. Significant achievements over the last few years have included:

• Engagement with the NHS and social care quality agenda leading to the production of the BAPEN toolkit for Commissioners and Providers “Malnutrition Matters: Meeting Quality Standards in Nutritional Care” launched in May 2010
• Members of BAPEN were involved in producing the NCEPOD (National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death) report on the care of hospital patients receiving parenteral nutrition, published in June 2010
• BAPEN took an active role in the consultation on NHS outcomes and are delighted that nutrition has been included in 2 of the 5 domains of the Department of Health NHS Outcomes Framework
• BAPEN has worked to support the development of a regionally based intestinal failure network, through the British Intestinal Failure Alliance (BIFA), led by Jeremy Powell-Tuck
• BAPEN has now undertaken 4 Nutrition Screening Weeks (one in each season) to give robust  data on the prevalence of malnutrition and those at risk of malnutrition in the UK
• BAPEN’s Malnutrition Advisory Group has continued to develop and promote 'MUST', our nutrition screening tool. There are now both hospital and community e-learning tools and a SCORM compliant version that allows the record of training to be incorporated in the NHS electronic staff record. There is a MUST calculator available on the BAPEN website and now a MUST ‘app’ for the i-Phone. ‘MUST’ is now the most widely used nutrition screening tool in the UK and the award of the 2008 NHS Business Award in the Innovation category recognised its excellence.
• Our British Artificial Nutrition Survey (BANS) committee has solved the difficulties relating to consent and data protection and launched e-BANS which allows the electronic recording of all patients on home enteral and parenteral feeding
• BAPEN has published a number of influential reports including:
  • Combating Malnutrition: Recommendations for Action.M Elia and CA Russell on behalf of the Advisory Group on Malnutrition (2008). This report estimated that public expenditure on disease-related malnutrition in the UK in 2007 was greater than £13 billion per year and that at any given point in time there are more than 3 million people in the UK who are either malnourished or at risk of malnutrition.
  • Improving Nutritional Care and Treatment: Perspectives and Recommendations from Population Groups, Patients and Carers. M Elia and RM Smith on behalf of BAPEN and its collaborators (2008)
  • Screening for Malnutrition in Sheltered Housing. M Elia and CA Russell on behalf of the Group on Nutrition and Sheltered Housing (2008)
  • Health Economic report on Malnutrition in the UK. The Cost of disease-related malnutrition in the UK and economic considerations for the use of oral nutritional supplements in adults. M Elia, R Stratton, C Russell, C Green, F Pang. Launched on 2006.
• BAPEN contributed to the Nutrition Fact Sheets published by the NPSA with Christine Russell drafting the Factsheet on Nutritional Screening
• BAPEN Medical (chaired by Jeremy Powell-Tuck) led the development of the British Consensus Guidelines on Intravenous Fluid Therapy for Adult Surgical Patients, working with the Association for Clinical Biochemistry, the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland and Society of Academic and Research Surgery, the Renal Association and the Intensive Care society. These guidelines were launched in 2008.
• BAPEN took an active and prominent role in the development of the Nutrition Action Plan and in the publication of “Improving Nutritional Care: A Joint Action Plan from the Department of Health and Nutrition Summit stakeholders”  published in October 2007
• BAPEN developed e-learning modules on nutrition for junior doctors and made them freely available on its website
• BAPEN continues to hold a successful annual conference and in 2012 is embarking on an exciting joint venture with the British Society of Gastroenterology, the British Association for the Study of the Liver and the Association of Upper GI Surgeons to hold a joint meeting (Digestive Diseases Foundation or DDF) in June 2012 – the first of its kind in the UK.
• BAPEN Core Groups all hold their own meetings and teaching days during the year, as do many of the BAPEN regions.

Click here for more details on Council members.