President's Message
Dr Trevor Smith, BAPEN President
Happy New Year to everyone reading my first In Touch column as BAPEN President!
I am so pleased to be starting my Presidency at such an exciting time for the organisation.
I’ve been involved with BAPEN for many years because I believe passionately in what we can achieve as a multi-disciplinary organisation. I’ve seen how much BAPEN has progressed since its conception in 1992 and feel honoured to have taken over leadership from Dr Simon Gabe, who has played a key role in navigating BAPEN towards a promising future.
I am grateful for the support of the Executive team, the Council and the Faculty, each member of which lends significant time and passion to our communal cause! I am pleased to extend a very warm welcome to those who have more recently joined our Executive team, we hope you will enjoy your new posts!
Looking to the year ahead, I am keen to maximise the work that Simon and the team carried out in developing the BAPEN 5-Year Strategy document. This is a very important document which sets out in detail the two main workstreams for BAPEN. The first focuses on nutritional screening and malnutrition pathways, and the second focuses on clinical nutrition and improving outcomes for patients who receive artificial nutrition support. Patient-centred delivery of the BAPEN strategy is my priority and I would like to utilise this document to guide the direction of our organisation throughout my Presidency.
BAPEN’s influence has grown in secondary care settings and I believe that many now look to us for nutrition guidance, education and training. Nonetheless, it is important for us to strengthen our voice within the community and amongst the general public. There is much work to be done still in the health and social care sector, as well as in the public sphere, to ensure that people at risk of malnutrition and in need of clinical nutrition support receive the best possible care.
BAPEN Annual Conference
At our annual conference last November, changes to the BAPEN constitution were unanimously voted in. I believe that the move to a Board of Trustees model will be of significant benefit moving forwards.
BAPEN 2019 will be in Belfast, and I’ve been very excited to see the programme that is underway. Do make sure to register to attend, the feedback we get each year from delegates is that it is a date that they cannot think about missing. Once attended, never forgotten!
2019 promises to be an exciting year for BAPEN, we have the second UK Malnutrition Awareness Week to look forward to, and many other interesting partnerships and collaborations. As an organisation, we are continuing to proactively gain traction in the media, as well as generating opportunities to interact with policy decision makers. BAPEN is growing its voice as we push to become a leading authority, not only within the nutrition community, but also nationally. Recently, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) published a report recommending that a dedicated Minister for Hunger be appointed to tackle the issues of hunger, malnutrition and obesity. The EAC report used BAPEN malnutrition statistics to bolster its recommendations, as did much of the resulting media coverage. It is successes such as this which we hope will drive awareness of BAPEN and the great work that we do. Read BAPEN’s statement in response to the EAC report here.
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