Krakow, Poland – 2 September 2019 - Since 2008 the Medical Nutrition International Industry (MNI) has annually awarded a national initiative promoting optimal nutritional care. With an ambitious multi-stakeholder project on the implementation of nutritional screening the Portuguese Clinical Nutrition Society – APNEP - was awarded the MNI Grant 2019.

The grant was consigned by MNI President - Fernando Mateus - during the ESPEN Congress on 2 September 2019 in Krakow, Poland: “This project de facto promotes an effective way to diagnose malnutrition in Portugal. The MNI Grant will support APNEP to implement the national policy on malnutrition screening, including screening programmes in public hospitals.”

Anibal Marinho – Chairman of the Portuguese Clinical Nutrition Society (APNEP) - who presented the project during the ESPEN-ONCA-MNI Joint Session – explained that: “Despite nutritional screening is now mandatory in Portuguese public hospitals, screening programmes are not yet part of standard procedures. We aim at developing a national policy regarding nutritional screening implementation by using appropriate screening tools.”

APNEP intends to achieve these ambitious objectives by:

• Developing and disseminating a national policy for nutritional screening at hospital level;
• Training targeted healthcare professionals (such as physicians, nurses and dieticians) on mandatory screening procedures;
• Monitoring national data analysis on malnutrition screening.

You can read the full project poster here.

The 2020 MNI Grant selection criteria were also announced by MNI President (download flyer). Deadline for submissions: 15 May 2020.

More information on MNI Grant and the past winning projects are available on MNI website here.

For enquiries you may contact the MNI Secretariat @ secretariat@medicalnutritionindustry.com

ABOUT

MNI - The Medical Nutrition International Industry (MNI) is the voice of the medical nutrition industry at international level. MNI gathers companies that offer specialised nutritional solutions and services designed to meet the diverse nutritional needs of patients. We strive to put nutrition at the heart of patient care and we aim at an environment that provides fair access to nutritional care throughout the world. MNI is dedicated to advancing better care through better nutrition, across all ages and healthcare settings.