Nutrition & Hydration Week 2014 Scoops Health & Vitality Honours Award

Nutrition & Hydration Week 2014 has won the Public Sector category of the Health & Vitality Honours 2015 Awards. Footprint Health & Vitality Honours is a platform for businesses to showcase best practice and help create a greater transparency on the social sustainability issue of health and nutrition throughout the foodservice supply chain.

The team leading Nutrition & Hydration Week (N&HW) – Caroline Lecko, Patient Safety lead for NHS England, Derek Johnson, Nutrition & Hydration Week lead for the National Association of Care Catering (NACC) and Andy Jones, Hospital Caterers Association (HCA) Chair – were quick to praise everyone involved in the winning campaign, stating, “We dared to dream, reach around the world and share the week, and it is through their hard work, dedication and determination to make a difference that made the week so successful.”

Footprint Health & Vitality Honours is designed to recognise achievement in this area by operators in both the cost and profit sectors of the industry and in the organisations that supply them. It also aims to promote the manufacture of healthier products, the implementation of healthy living programmes in foodservice and awareness amongst consumers of the industries work and achievements. The winners of the awards are carefully selected by a panel of expert judges, using strict criteria to measure the sustainable impact of each product, company or service.

Nutrition & Hydration Week’s mission was ‘to create a global movement to reinforce and focus energy, activity and engagement on nutrition and hydration as an important part of quality care, experience and safety improvement in health and social care settings. “And together,” says HCA National Chair, Andy Jones “we more than achieved it.

“The week was a call to action to improve the nutrition and hydration for the people that we provide care for, regardless of care setting, organisation, region or country. It was and is about everyone recognising that they make a contribution to improving the health and well-being of people in their care and it has been wonderful to see health and care teams working together to make a real difference.”

Making a real difference and the success of N&HW was noted by the judges who commented that N&HW is a ‘Very good awareness week and building on their previous achievements.’ And that it is an ‘Initiative that shows the benefits and power of social media, an event that is growing in awareness and can be easily replicated.’
‘Caroline Lecko, Andy Jones and Derek Johnson have been passionate over a number of years to get the issue of malnutrition high on everyone’s agenda. To date this has been successful and they developed a national team of like minded people to get the nutrition [sic recognised] as a vital part of the patients medical recovery.’ For the video of the day, see the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpiBokzQgeA