Why you need a toolkit for Malnutrition in Primary Care

Presenter:  Heather Keller, PhD / Moderator:  Marg Alfieri, RD

Session Description:

Community nutrition care for malnourished patients is now in the spotlight with the increased recognition of COVID-19 patients being discharged home from hospital in compromised states. Older adults have also been highlighted as a group in need of nutrition care, with food access challenges and isolation coming to the foreground during the pandemic. Now is the time to fill your toolbox with tools that can be used to provide virtual nutrition care for nutrition risk and malnourished patients. This session will highlight two new consensus-  and evidence-based pathways that provide guidance on how to provide best practice nutrition care in the community setting.

Speaker Bio:

Heather Keller, RD, PhD is the Schlegel Research Chair in Nutrition & Aging at the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging and University of Waterloo. She is an internationally recognized expert in geriatric nutrition, assessment, and treatment. Research areas are focused on nutrition risk and malnutrition identification and treatment across health care sectors; improving nutrition care in hospital; self-management and using screening in the community to improve nutritional status; institutional food and promoting and improving food intake, especially for vulnerable older adults, including those living with dementia. Professor Keller has led several national research and knowledge translation projects and published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and translates much of this evidence into practice with tools and resources. She is past chair/co-chair (2009-2018) of the Canadian Malnutrition Task Force and currently leads the Primary Care working Group of CMTF.