Nutrition is an important determinant of health. It has been observed that nutrition plays a significant role in preventing the risk of contracting diseases such as cancer and other age-related problems. However, no sufficient attention is given to nutrition strategy in the European policy agenda, especially to the topic of malnutrition.
For this reason HOPE, together with a group of stakeholders active in the health area, founded in 2005 the European Nutrition for Health Alliance (ENHA) in a united effort to raise awareness of the importance and the urgency of the issue of malnutrition and set up an agenda for action at European level.
The Alliance’s activities held between 2005 and 2010 mainly aimed to raise awareness about this important issue. Activities included conferences and the study “Health and Economic Impact of Malnutrition in Europe”.
Between 2011 and 2013, ENHA adapted its work programme and focused on developing the Nutritional Screening and Follow Up Care Campaign. ENHA became also the coordinator of the undernutrition and screening groups within the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (Action group A3 on Frailty and Functional Decline). In 2013, HOPE and EHMA (European Health Management Association) published together a paper untitled “Under-nutrition: Removing barriers to efficient patient nutrition within both the hospital and home-care setting“.
In 2014, ENHA has launched in partnership with its member organisations the Optimal Nutritional Care for All (ONCA) campaign, a multi-stakeholder initiative to facilitate greater screening for risk of disease-related malnutrition/undernutrition and nutritional care implementation across Europe. The ONCA campaign aimed at engaging with different stakeholders which were brought together at Implementation Conferences in Brussels (4-5 November 2014) and Berlin (3-4 November 2015) and at a workshop in Dubrovnik, Croatia on the 17 April 2015.
More information on the European Nutrition for Health Alliance can be found at the following address: http://www.european-nutrition.org/