The Voice of
European Dietitians President's Message: Welcome back from your summer break! As my picture shows taken about 10 days ago I still want to be on holiday! But our Newsletter brings me back to reality and shows how hard dietitians have been working in many diverse and significant ways. Firstly, many congratulations to our co-‐chairs of the European Network of Dietetic Students on winning the Complete Nutrition ‘Student of the Year Competition’ – read more on page 12. What a wonderful and well-‐ deserved honour and recognition for European students. Other members have also been in the news: in particular, the Portuguese nutritionists came up with a novel way of directly influencing their politicians in parliament -‐ see page 9. Also, the irrepressible Arnt Steffensen from the Norwegian Dietetic Association launched a campaign to bring to the attention of public and politicians the situation regarding food and nutrition, and especially malnutrition, in care homes. Arnt took a ‘pressure’ point of public concern and showed how dietitians can make a difference through carefully timed and coordinated media events. These can have a real impact and may become a political issue in Norwegian local/national elections. Arnt highlighted two objectives from the European Dietetic Action Plan (EuDAP; 2015-‐ 2020) and I hope that more readers will tell us how they are meeting the EuDAP actions in future issues of the Newsletter. It is conference season and the EFAD conference programme is ready and I hope to see many of you in Amsterdam – see the next two pages for the finalised programme. We will be welcoming our newest European Specialist Dietetic Network (ESDN) in Oncology and showcasing our other ESDNs as dietitians share their expertise and interests. Once again we will be attracting dietitians from across the world to our conference and seeing that students are also on exchange visits (Germany / Canada page 6) makes me wonder how much else is going on in Europe to share and develop the profession. Please keep those inspiring updates coming into the Editor – it is all abut communication!
Anne
Anne de Looy, President, EFAD Professor of Dietetics, Plymouth University, England
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