12 Sep 2024 Like Darzi, BANT believes the NHS must reform and focus on prevention-led healthcare.
The recently published Labour-commissioned Lord Darzi report claimed the NHS must ‘reform or die’.
Like Darzi, BANT believes the ‘NHS must reform’. Chronic disease results in patients requiring years of care at spiralling costs to the NHS. Of the £280.7 billion allocated to healthcare expenditure annually, £58 billion is spent on treating obesity related ill health alone (1,2). Over 50% of GP visits are now from patients living with metabolic disorders such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer – all of which require a dietary component to optimise treatment and prevention.
The Labour manifesto made clear the desire to shift the focus of the health system towards prevention, a vision shared by the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT). We welcome the opportunity to work with the new government to make this a reality, and to present our BANT manifesto with focus on real food, and including nutrition and lifestyle practitioners in NHS primary care to prevent incidence of chronic disease.
At present, there is no nutrition service in NHS primary care and GPs have neither the time nor training to provide the nutrition support needed. We seek to address this with Labour to build immediate capacity within the NHS workforce and relieve pressure within primary care. To reverse this trend requires a focus on the drivers of chronic disease in the UK, namely preventative-health measures including nutrition and lifestyle. BANT has been advocating preventative-health measures for over 25 years and this is now not just an option but a necessity.
It is reported that as few as 4,400 of the UK’s 10,000 Registered Dietitians are working in the NHS, predominantly in hospital settings (3,4). BANT represents nearly 3,000 PSA-accredited Registered Nutritional Therapy Practitioners, who serve communities across the UK primarily in private practice. BANT members are working routinely with NHS patients with chronic disease; through providing support on diet, lifestyle, and behaviour change.
NHS expenditure can be significantly reduced by releasing NHS staff and resources currently tied to the care of chronic conditions, to allow better outcomes in acute and critical care, and by bringing in qualified nutritional therapy practitioners to provide prevention-focused nutrition and lifestyle care. This is essential to realising the Labour vision for excellent primary care and moving from sickness to prevention. BANT seeks to discuss how its members could be of service in this endeavour.
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Notes to editor:
Read more about the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine’s manifesto asks of the new Labour government: https://bant.org.uk/bant-manifesto/
Follow BANT position on current nutrition and healthcare affairs via our dedicated Politics Home PR channel ((Politics Home is an indispensable information source for the most influential people in UK politics – including Cabinet ministers, MPs, peers, senior civil servants and Westminster journalists).
BANT is the leading professional body for Registered Nutritional Therapy Practitioners in one-to-one clinical practice and a self-regulator for BANT Registered Nutritionists®. BANT members combine a network approach to complex systems, incorporating the latest science from genetic, epigenetic, diet and nutrition research to inform individualised recommendations. BANT oversees the activities, training and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of its members.
Registered Nutritional Therapists are regulated by the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) that holds an Accredited Voluntary Register (AVR) for the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA). A report by the Royal Society for Public Health and the Professional Standards Agency made a key recommendation that AVR practitioners have the authority to make direct NHS referrals, in appropriate cases, to ease the administrative burden on GP surgeries. BANT nutrition practitioners are the key workforce asset to harness 21st-century lifestyle medicine to tackle the rising tide of stress-related fatigue, obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, dementia and other chronic diseases.
To find a BANT nutrition practitioner, please click here
References:
- Office for National Statistics. (2020). Healthcare expenditure, UK health accounts: 2018. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/ukhealthaccounts/2021
- Cost of Obesity: Frontier Economics, accessed 02 May 2024
- HCPC Data on dietitians accessed 30/04/2024 – HCPC diversity data report 2021 – https://www.hcpc-uk.org/globalassets/resources/factsheets/hcpc-diversity-data-2021-factsheet–dietitians.pdf
- BDA Benchmarking data – https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/11137/pdf/
