The BDA is the professional association and trade union for dietitians

The Role of Dietitians

Registered Dietitians (RDs) are the only qualified health professionals that assess, diagnose and treat diet and nutrition problems at an individual and wider public health level. Uniquely, dietitians use the most up to date public health and scientific research on food, health and disease, which they translate into practical guidance to enable people to make appropriate lifestyle and food choices.

Dietitians are the only nutrition professionals to be statutorily regulated, and governed by an ethical code, to ensure that they always work to the highest standard. Dietitians work in the NHS, private practice, industry, education, research, sport, media, public relations, publishing, NGOs and government. Their advice influences food and health policy across the spectrum from government, local communities and individuals.

The title dietitian can only be used by those appropriately trained professionals who have registered with the Health Professions Council and whose details are on the HPC web site. We have a leaflet that explains the roles of nutrition professionals further.

Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition: on-line

The British Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada are very proud to announce the first international collaboration for Practice-based Evidence in Nutrition (PEN). The BDA is working with the PEN Team to build the UK content.

PEN subscriptions are now available for purchase. The next period of BDA membership includes PEN membership.

Developed by Dietitians of Canada with input from thought leaders in nutrition and dietetic practice, knowledge translation and technology, its powerful search tools and 'Knowledge Pathway' format are designed to deliver evidence-based guidance to nutrition practice questions as well as provide links to client and professional tools and resources easily and efficiently. Read more about PEN ...

LATEST NEWS: CPD opportunity! Online, Evidence-based Practice course.

Finding a Dietitian

Most people will be able to see a Registered Dietitian within the NHS after being referred by an NHS GP, doctor, health visitor or other medical staff. You can also self-refer. Consultations with dietitians within the NHS are free.

Alternatively if you wish to see a Registered Dietitian who practises privately, you can search on-line for a dietitian near you at the Freelance Dietitians web site, which is run by the BDA's Freelance Dietitian Group.

BDA Media Coverage

The BDA Press Office Media Hotline has now changed to 0800 048 1714.

History of the BDA

All three volumes of the BDA History are now available.

Volume 3 is available in full print edition as well as on-line.

New BDA Policy Statement

During Coeliac Awareness Week (14-20 May 2012), the British Dietetic Association has published its Gluten Free Food on Prescription policy statement.

100,000 Older People in Scotland starving in their own Homes Every Day

The British Dietetic Association (BDA) successfully tabled a hard-hitting motion at this year’s Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) to highlight levels of malnutrition in older people living in their own homes, which has been unanimously supported and passed.

This year’s STUC took place in Inverness 23-25 April 2012. The BDA motion (number 85) was heard on Tuesday 24th April.

Highlighting “this scandalous hunger gap” at the 115th STUC forms part of the BDA’s Mind the Hunger Gap campaign, specifically created to throw light on this national problem.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is pictured with Simon Fevre, Elderly Community Dietitian for Fife and Chair of BDA Scottish Employment Relations Committee.

Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP)

QIPP is a large scale transformational programme for the NHS, involving all NHS staff, clinicians, patients and the voluntary sector and will improve the quality of care the NHS delivers whilst making up to £20billion of efficiency savings by 2014-15, which will be reinvested in frontline care.

The Strategic Health Authority AHP Leads for England have worked with NHS London who compiled the AHP QIPP Toolkits. These will help commissioners design services that are of high quality whilst reducing cost, and show how AHPs are a vital part of that solution. The toolkits have been designed collaboratively with all 12 Allied Health Professional Bodies, including the British Dietetic Association, who endorsed their content, and have been co-produced in many areas with National clinical directors.

On 1st November 2011, the British Dietetic Association (BDA) launched a brand new national campaign called Mind the Hunger Gap.

The first phase of the campaign will involve calling on all dietitians in the UK to highlight the national disgrace that conservatively estimated involves around 1,000,000 (one million) older people in the UK eating less than one square meal a day.  This figure does not include those older people in a hospital or care setting, it is those older people living in our community or, as they have become, the ‘invisible’ population.

Malnutrition does not discriminate and it impacts on people regardless of age, gender or race. While the World Health Organization cites malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world’s public health, it is still widely believed that malnutrition is restricted to the third world population.  Quite simply, it is not.

Mind the Hunger Gap is an online-based campaign. The website (www.mindthehungergap.com) offers downloadable materials and campaign tools to highlight the issue locally, while the BDA will raise the issue on a national level.

While primarily a dietitian-led campaign, the Mind the Hunger Gap website will also have various tools that members of the public can use to add their support.

Read the full Mind the Hunger Gap launch press release.

The BDA has developed a series of Key Fact information sheets designed to raise the profile of dietitians and highlight their varied roles in different speciality areas.  The first three are on the topics of Malnutrition, Obesity and Diabetes.