Nutritional screening in the community: developing strategies

Malnutrition is a significant clinical and public health problem in the community with the wider determinants of health including poverty, social isolation and deprivation all exacerbating its incidence. It is frequently undetected and untreated. Effective nutritional screening is needed to reduce the prevalence of malnutrition but barriers to implementation do exist. Working with staff to identify barriers that prevent the effective adoption of nutritional screening is key to ensuring that appropriate nutritional action always occurs in a timely manner. Profiling the local community helps to give a clearer overview of the high-risk population groups and provides robust evidence which helps the process of identifying priorities for action.