Better Health For All

#futureofpublichealth: this is the first in a series of blogs that aims to champion the prevention delivered in NHS settings as part of the NHS at 70 celebrations and FPH’s public health funding campaign

“This week is the fifth annual British Dietetic Association (BDA) Dietitians Week, when the dietetic profession come together to spread the word about our work and profession. Our theme this year is “Dietitians Do Prevention”. All four nations in the UK have identified improving prevention and public health as a key component of the future NHS.

There is a growing drive for more resource in prevention and public health activities as a means to managing pressures on clinical and social care services, and increasing the sustainability of provision.

Public Health Dietetic practice is my own specialist area. For some time, it has felt as though this area has been somewhat on the fringe, seen as less complex and as somehow less critical than clinical work. But now, the role that public health practice is being seen as valuable in its own right. The skills that dietitians hold in negotiating complexity in practice and their skills as influencers are greatly needed.

Although we may not always use the same language to describe it, we know that all dietitians already “do prevention”. They employ Healthy Conversations in their day to day work, they embrace MECC (Making Every Contact Count) principles utilising brief advice and brief intervention methods, and that social media spaces offer great opportunities for dietitians to share public health messages and information. Indeed, we’re sharing plenty of examples and case studies on social media this week, and are pleased the Faculty of Public Health will be joining us to share these messages.

Prevention and public health are going to be priorities beyond Dietitians Week. I recently launched it as the Chairman’s Theme at BDA Live, the BDA’s bi-annual conference. “Go to Dietitians for Prevention” will focus the Associations attention on driving this agenda and gives us opportunities to influence stakeholders, politicians and the public in a variety of ways.

The theme will be multifaceted, with public facing elements such as our recent Twitter campaign with Diabetes UK and Beat Flu focusing on promoting free flu jabs for people with a very high BMI. We also have examples of grass roots actions by BDA members. The creation of the Twitter hash tags #WhatDietitansDo or #WhatRDsDo toward the end of last year had a reach of many hundreds of thousands and continues to be a powerful way of highlighting and sharing best practice amongst the profession. Of course, social media offers ideal forums for dietitians to engage in public health messaging – the mere act of talking about our work, including newly emerging and evolving practice, spreads our influence.

But social media campaigns won’t be enough on their own and we must think about how we are designing our services; does everything need to be done directly by dietitians for example, is a check that we should be asking frequently. Many health authorities now employ dietitians to help build capacity in others. Supporting knowledge and skills development in other health and social care professionals and volunteers is an ideal way to spread evidence-based nutrition messages and specifically targeting colleagues who have food, nutrition and hydration in their roles, gives us the chance to significantly increase the number of people with the right skills.

We also recognise the need to work with others to highlight the importance of prevention and public health and campaign for more support for this important area of healthcare. This is why we are pleased to be working more closely with the Faculty of Public Health in the coming years and supporting their own campaigns.

As the incoming Chairman of the BDA, I have spent the last twelve months undergoing a steep learning curve. As I have become more involved with the work of the Association I can better understand the breadth of challenges facing us and our profession. The challenges are not, of course, unique to Dietetics but that doesn’t mean that we should assume there is little that we can do.

The time is right for this theme! I’m very excited about Dietitians Week 2018 which will hopefully kick start a much greater recognition of the role of dietitians as “go to” professionals for prevention and public health.”

Written by Caroline Bovey RD BEM, Public Health Dietitian and BDA Chair-Elect.

Note from FPH: As we celebrate the NHS at 70, many in the health community are taking this moment to ask some big questions about the kind of future we envision for our health system and the level of funding support necessary to realise it. We believe that public health and prevention must be central in this national debate about the future of NHS funding and we’d like your support to help us make that case. If you’re an FPH member or work in the NHS delivering prevention, please consider joining our ‘sounding board’ of members and clinicians who are helping us develop policy on this issue. For more info, please email policy@fph.org.uk or click here.