The UK Malnutrition Awareness Week

UK Malnutrition Awareness Week has taken place every year since 2018. It is coordinated by BAPEN and the Malnutrition Task Force.

Objectives

Our 2020 campaign sought to increase understanding of this undernutrition and dehydration in the UK in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. The goal was to raise awareness and increase understanding of malnutrition risks and consequences amongst health and social care workers, community groups, the public, parliamentarians and policymakers, and mobilise people to take action to identify, prevent and better manage malnutrition.

Raise awareness of malnutrition (and dehydration) among the public and encourage the use of self-screening tools
Help health and social care professionals understand their role in preventing and treating malnutrition and routinely screening for malnutrition
Demonstrate what good nutritional care looks like and help organisations and individuals achieve it
Engage policymakers, public sector representatives, local and national government, third sector and voluntary sector organisations and help them recognise the need to tackle malnutrition now

Activities: overview

Resources for use with at-risk people and within the medical community
Promotion of nationwide malnutrition risk screening survey
Multi-channel social media campaign
Traditional and specialist media campaign
Parliamentary drop-in event

Activities: expanded

We updated and promoted the wider library of materials for health and social care professionals, leaders of voluntary organisations and others to use and share. We provided posters, downloadable resources and materials, support packs, information on how to support UKMAW, and our Mission Statement.
We oversaw a nationwide effort to capture data on malnutrition risk and nutrition interventions, in every nation within the UK, and in all care settings. We set up the screening programme and promoted it widely to health and social care professionals, securing their involvement.
We organised and hosted a Parliamentary drop-in event where we were able to spend time discussing malnutrition risk within the context of coronavirus on a one to one basis. We sent detailed malnutrition briefing documents to all those who attended or expressed interest.
An extensive media campaign secured coverage within the traditional broadcast space of seven regional radio stations and one syndicated regional TV station. We also secured coverage in four specialist professional media outlets. A media doctor helped to get messages out to the public, sharing the results of a public survey highlighting malnutrition myths and misconceptions and the impact of lockdown.
Our social campaign spanned across channels, including Facebook, Twitter, and a new dedicated joint Instagram was set up between BAPEN and Malnutrition Task Force. Our social media content was rich and varied including animations and videos and messages of support from key stakeholders from across the health, social care and patient support sector.

Results

Our parliamentary drop-in event was attended by eleven parliamentarians. Before and after the event five MPs posted about UKMAW on their respective social channels.
In traditional media, total radio impressions exceeded 750,000 listeners with our story about COVID-19’s impact on older people eating.
Our social media activity produced a lot of traffic on our accounts and received strong engagement from professionals and patient and carer support groups, for instance, AGE UK, Carers UK and Care England. Our social accounts also saw a significant increase in following in the month of October.
Our campaign videos together totalled over 200,000 impressions across BAPEN and Malnutrition Task Force social accounts.