COMMUNITY NUTRITION AND DIETETICS - A SURVEY OF NUTRITION GROUP MEMBERS IN 1995

In 1995 the Community Nutrition Group (CNG) of the British Dietetic As sociation (BDA) celebrated its 21st birthday. Enormous development in community nutrition and dietetics has taken place in these 21 years. M embership of the CNG now stands at 493, representing 12% of the member ship of the BDA. In December 1995 a questionnaire was sent to all memb ers of the CNG, of whom 73% completed the questionnaire. Information c ollected included work structures; aspects of work which had increased or decreased during the past 5 years and the proportion of time alloc ated to specific community nutrition activities. The results show that there has been an increase in the number of dietitians working in the community (average reported increase of 1.78 whole time equivalents). The main area of growth has been in all aspects of primary care (clin ical, health promotion and training]. Other areas of growth include co mmunity clinical work, training, health promotion and community develo pment. The concern that the nutrition facilitation role of the dietiti an in the community is being dominated by clinical work is not support ed; 51% of CNG members' time is spent in nutrition facilitation, 37% i n clinical work. Dietitians working in the community must continue to work to demonstrate the effectiveness of their nutrition facilitation role to secure continued funding.