Optimal Nutritional Care for All
Launched in 2014, the Optimal Nutritional Care for All (ONCA) campaign is a multi-stakeholder initiative to facilitate greater screening for risk of disease-related malnutrition/undernutrition and nutritional care implementation across Europe.
The campaign supports national professional societies, associations and patient groups in public health and health care to implement nutritional risk screening and optimal nutritional care in their country. The European Nutrition for Health Alliance (ENHA) provides structure, coordinates, inspires and facilitates.
ENHA has appointed a Steering Committee from its membership to lead the initiative through strategic guidance and engagement with partners at national level. The Steering Committee is made up of representatives from ESPEN, EUGMS, EFAD, EGAN.
Why was the campaign launched?
Up to 2010, ENHA worked extensively with members of the European Parliament and other stakeholders to organise political support to get disease-related malnutrition/undernutrition on the European health agenda.
At a conference organised in November 2010 together with European Parliament members and the Belgian EU Presidency, one of the conclusions was to translate political support into action in the form of implementation at national level.
Since 2011, ENHA developed collaborations with selected countries including Belgium and Ireland to engage in this implementation process. Several countries in Europe are now making progress in various ways towards improving nutritional care. ENHA felt that the time is right to speed up the process to make sure that all patients in Europe receive optimal nutritional care.
What are the campaign’s objectives?
- Facilitate participating countries to implement optimal nutritional care for all;
- Strengthen national multi-stakeholder alliances;
- Benchmark current state of play of national nutritional care programmes;
- Support the implementation of the agreed ONCA strategy and country-tailored activities;
- Share good practices;
- Measure progress and in-country impact per year;
- Align and leverage with key stakeholders and international organisations EU, WHO EURO.
Participating country group
There are twenty countries currently involved in the ONCA campaign: Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Turkey, the UK, Hungary. Norway is an observer.
The ONCA Conference and Malnutrition Awareness Weeks
The Optimal Nutritional Care for All (ONCA) campaign organises its annual conference and other policy-related events. In addition, many European countries have launched their ‘Malnutrition Awareness Week’ since 2020: 16 ONCA countries are engaging in Malnutrition Awareness Week in 2024.
ONCA Conferences and policy seminars
Here you can find the reports, presentations and images of the ONCA Conferences and other events.
Visit even pageCountry progress dashboards
You can find the latest progress dashboards (example Spain) for ONCA member countries on the country pages. These dashboards monitor progress and outcomes across a range of indicators for nutritional screening, care and provision.
Calls for Action
The ONCA campaign supports collaborative efforts to combat malnutrition across Europe. To that end, ONCA members are encouraged to respond to calls for action both as individual members and through campaign-wide responses.
Below you can find a number of calls for action which ONCA has responded to, and will continue to engage with.
