2023 marks the 15th anniversary of the grant. Over the years, the MNI Grant has supported or stimulated ambitious initiatives – endorsed by PEN (or sister) societies worldwide – which have contributed to improving nutritional care policies at national level. These projects have covered a wide range of topics linked to nutritional care; from effective screening to reduction in prevalence of malnutrition risk, and from strategies in clinical practice to demonstrating the health economic benefits.   

2023 also marks the launch of MNI five-year strategy (2023-2027) which reasserts MNI’s priorities, focus, and overall direction; the MNI Grant serves as one of the enablers of MNI’s three strategic objectives: 

1. raising the importance of medical nutrition (MN) in the care pathway 

2. safeguarding and enhancing patient access to medical nutrition in the European Union 

3. ensuring the proper (clinical) use of medical nutrition 

whilst encouraging and supporting projects that will help advance support and care to patients. 

In the words of Manuela Schaflechner (MNI President), "The nutritional care community has achieved meaningful progress over the years in enhancing awareness and visibility on medical nutrition. MNI is proud to have supported this evolution and looks forward to continue bringing together researchers, patients, carers and healthcare professionals in increasing knowledge of the importance of access to optimal nutritional care”. The 2023 MNI Grant demonstrates “the association’s commitment to supporting evidence-based medicine and the latest scientific developments, together with their implementation, via specialist healthcare professionals – thereby ensuring the proper use of medical nutrition, as per our strategic plan”.

For the past 15 years, the MNI Grant has been an invaluable catalyst for driving research in the area of nutritional care, often leading to long-lasting projects and impactful initiatives. Starting in 2008, with a successful ‘Malnutrition Matters’ campaign in UK, to last years’ winner (2022) the Italian Society of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (SINPE), the grant started as a reward destined for finalised projects and developed into a grant where the objective is to support and inspire high quality research projects.   

The MNI Grant has ensured that malnutrition is seen as major public health issue to projects that set up the development of research-hubs (still going strong 12 years later!), the MNI Grant has pushed medical nutrition to the forefront of many national policy and research agendas.  

“MNI award in 2013 was enormously helpful to our efforts to highlight the problem of malnutrition in the Irish healthcare system” - Niamh Rice -  

Several of the project, funded by the MNI Grant focused successfully on the role of education and training, resulted in projects that encouraged health authorities to increase the importance of clinical nutrition in medical educational curriculums, and have set up cross-disciplinary educational programmes on nutrition.  

“Since 2016 we have reached more than 1000 students through these annual Clinical Nutrition Congresses for students, Student congresses were clustered by medical students and lectures on clinical nutrition given. We hope our work can inspire and be a useful guide for other countries.”  - Dr. Kubilay Demirag, KEPAN President -   

A major topic regarding medical nutrition and malnutrition is effective diagnosis and the improvement of accessibility for medical nutrition, which is showcased in many projects in the past 15 years, focusing on strengthening malnutrition management models and improving outpatient facilities.   

“MNI Grant reinforced our strength and gave us new dimensions in our strategy to achieve greater developments on malnutrition management in Portugal. It supported our initiative on mandatory screening implementation to promote an effective malnutrition diagnosis and the improvement of outpatient accessibility for medical nutrition is closer than ever before”

- Aníbal Marinho, President, APNEP -  

MNI is proud to have supported many successful initiatives and projects in the past 15 years. In according with its 5-year Strategy, MNI is looking forward to continue adding value to research in nutritional care in order to increase knowledge of the importance medical nutrition in the care pathway.

Applications for the 2023 grant are still open until April 30!   

Sum of the Grant: 30.000 €

Download the 2023 MNI Grant Flyer

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