BAPEN Reviews…
Malnutrition Awareness Week
Here at BAPEN, we’re passionate about raising awareness of the risks and impacts of malnutrition and this year we decided to team up with the Malnutrition Task Force to run the UK’s inaugural Malnutrition Awareness Week.
We kicked off UK Malnutrition Awareness Week on 1st October, which is the International Day of Older Persons. Although malnutrition doesn’t discriminate, increasing age only increases your risk. Of the approximately 3 million people in the UK who are malnourished or at risk of being so, 1.3 million are over the age of 65.
To mark the week, we produced a series of materials for people to share with older people they come into contact with through voluntary sector activities. Our materials focused on explaining why you are at a greater risk of malnutrition as you age, and what signs and symptoms to look out for, as well as what to do if you suspect malnutrition. All of these new materials worked to signpost people to our online self-screening tool as we are very keen to help people discover this and get using it as a first port of call. The week may now be over, but you can still download our materials here.
Collaboration is key to initiatives like these, so we used some people power to consolidate our message. As well as it being a joint effort between ourselves and Malnutrition Task Force, we were fortunate to gain the backing of likeminded organisations, including the British Dietetic Association, Hertfordshire Independent Living Service (HILS), University of Hertfordshire, the Motor Neurone Disease Association and Home Instead.
We were delighted to see HILS run a Good Nutrition Community Day in St Albans. This free event allowed local older people, their carers and family to learn about the role of nutrition in staying healthy, make the most of confidential screenings, and get to know others from the area, because socialising and reducing loneliness can also be powerful methods for overcoming malnutrition.
During the week we shared the results of a survey we commissioned especially for Malnutrition Awareness Week. The survey found that 45% of respondents mistakenly believe that it’s normal to lose weight in later life.
We achieved lots of coverage in the national press for Malnutrition Awareness Week, including in The Times, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2! We also did lots of work spreading the word on social media including asking people to share their #MAWConversations selfies!
Overall, we were delighted by the results of Malnutrition Awareness Week. On social media, it reached 12.2 million Facebook and Twitter users. Meanwhile, the total reach of the campaign came to 62,688,553, in terms of monthly unique browsers, circulation and readership.
UK MAW also saw us run the final Nutritional Care Tool Data Collection Week of 2018 and publish a new report, ‘Managing malnutrition to improve lives and save money’.
UK MAW follows the example of the American version. We think our friends across the pond, ASPEN, do a great job and hope that other nations will follow suit as malnutrition is a global issue.