BAPEN’s approach to fighting malnutrition in the UK has been wide ranging and comprehensive. BAPEN has recognised the need to engage with all stakeholders, including the public, patients, health and social care professionals, charities, Industry, government, and regulators to maximise awareness of the problem and to embed good nutritional care in all settings.
Key activities include data collection and analysis through the British Artificial Nutrition Survey (BANS) and Nutrition Screening weeks, the development of the ‘MUST’ screening tool and educational materials, the publication of reports, briefings and lobbying of parliament, the annual BAPEN conference, regional meetings, working with partners and networking.
The success of this approach is evident where BAPEN has collaborated with and influenced national policy, to recognise and tackle malnutrition. Examples include:
- Update of the NHSE Nutrition Strategy due to be published in 2024. Several members of BAPEN Executive are collaborating with key stakeholders to update the strategy and reflect nutritional care within the new structure of Integrated Care Systems.
- Development of the BAPEN Patient Network Group in collaboration with PINNT, reaching out to other patient organisations to raise the profile of nutritional care amongst service users.
- Parliamentary drop-in sessions during UK Malnutrition Awareness Week 2020 to engage all MPs and parliamentary peers.
- BAPEN, working with the Department of Health, has been instrumental in developing and delivering a national quality improvement strategy and implementation programme to ensure safe nutritional care is delivered for patients in England
- The NICE CG 174 Intravenous fluid therapy in adults in hospital, chaired by Professor Mike Stroud, (a past chairman of BAPEN)
- The NICE QS24 Nutrition Support in Adults chaired by Professor Marinos Elia (a past Chairman of BAPEN)
