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IAEA: eNewsletter The Nutritional & Health-related Environmental Studies Section

Our colleagues at IAEA are excited to share their latest eNewsletter, including the launch of the UN Nutrition Strategy 2022- 2030. Stineke Oenema, Executive Secretary of UN-Nutrition, editor-in-chief of the strategy also co-chairs the IUNS Task Force on Sustainable Diets.

Also in this issue:

  • Proposition to create an online stable isotope user group
  • Special collection “Nuclear Techniques in Nutrition Research” in the Journal of Nutrition
  • Apply to the IAEA PhD Sandwich Fellowship Programme
  • Nuclear Explained – IAEA’s Podcast
  • Nuclear Data Reveals How Much Water You Should Drink Daily
  • Relation between breast milk intake and maternal education
  • Inaugural issue of the UN Nutrition Journal

ICONIC – Special Focus Dialogue December 7 2021

ICONIC, the IUNS Task Force, will be holding its second Special Focus Dialogue in collaboration with UICC on Tuesday 7th December, with a focus this time on prehabilitation in cancer care:  Special Focus Dialogue: Prehabilitation – Multimodal interventions to improve resilience and response to treatment in cancer | UICC

Special Focus Dialogue: Prehabilitation – Multimodal interventions to improve resilience and response to treatment in cancer | UICC

Speakers

Chair: Dr Steve Wootton – Associate Professor of Nutrition, University of Southampton (UK), and Deputy Chair, International Collaboration on Nutrition in relation to Cancer (ICONIC) Prof. Franco Carli- Professor of Anesthesia and Associate Professor, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University (Canada), and Honorary Board Member, International Prehabilitation Society.

About

On receiving a diagnosis, people with cancer face many challenges. For some, the cancer may already have affected both their physical and nutritional state, as well as their psychological well-being, before treatment is started. Individually and combined, such changes can decrease patients’ resilience to cancer and affect their response to surgery or systemic anti-cancer treatment. To maximise health outcomes, patients need to be supported to address their nutritional needs, to engage in supervised and structured exercise therapy, and to access psychological support. Thanks to this prehabilitation, a patient’s physical and psychological resilience and response to treatment can be improved in a way that fosters a sense of control and purpose and enables them to take steps to improve and maintain their long-term health.

These principles have been included in a report published by Macmillan Cancer Support, the Royal College of Anesthetists and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cancer and Nutrition Collaboration(link is external) calling for a greater focus on prehabilitation, including nutrition, physical activity and psychological support, in the delivery of cancer care. It is now increasingly evident that the principles of multimodal interventions prior to surgery are equally applicable across all aspects of improving the resilience and wellbeing of the patient prior, during and after therapy, or even for those receiving treatment with non-curable intent. 

In this Special Focus Dialogue, experts on prehabilitation in cancer will come together to share their experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating prehabilitation interventions, including how being nutritionally, physically, and psychologically ‘unfit’ might influence the resilience to cancer and how multimodal prehabilitation can help decrease treatment-related morbidity, increase cancer treatment options, and improve physical and psychological health outcomes.

Regular updates on all the Dialogues will be on Twitter (@iuns_iconic).

Register here
Credit: WFP/Ahmed Haleem

New Publication: IUNS TF and World Food Programme- State of School Feeding Worldwide 2020 Report

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched the current report analysing the State of School Feeding Worldwide, an inter-agency undertaking with extensive engagement of UNESCO, UNICEF and others. The IUNS International Malnutrition Task Force has worked directly with the inter-agency group.
The report includes “A paediatric nutritionist’s perspective on food, schools and school feeding”, contributed by the Co-Chair of the IUNS International Malnutrition Task Force, Prof. Alan A. Jackson.


The report uses the best available data sources to describe key aspects of coverage, implementation practices and costs of school-based health and nutrition programmes worldwide. Additionally the report seeks to analyse the direction and scale of change between the previous report (2013) and 2020, and to provide an update on advances in evidence and understanding of school feeding programmes. The report includes analysis of the impact the COVID-19 Pandemic has had on the global growth of school feeding programmes.

The report is available here State of School Feeding Worldwide 2020 | World Food Programme (wfp.org)


During 2020 the UN Network for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) merged to form UN Nutrition. This inter-agency collaboration is focused on tackling School Feeding and the effective prevention and treatment of severe malnutrition infants and young children. The International Malnutrition Task Force will continue engagement with the activities of UN Nutrition.