Project 465776

The Canadian Nutrition Society is Canada's leading society for nutrition professionals. As an embedded Fellow, I will work with the Canadian Malnutrition Taskforce-their flagship initiative-to support integration of a new malnutrition care standard in Canadian hospitals. Advancing Malnutrition Care (AMC) was designed to bring best practices from this standard to hospitals across the country. The aim of my project is to lead the spreading and scaling of the AMC program with focus on capacity-building within the Canadian health system. My specific roles will include: 1) Building regional mentor and hospital champion capacity to support implementation of best practices in malnutrition care; 2) Understanding mentor and champion experiences to learn of the barriers and opportunities that they face; 3) Monitoring hospital-level progress and corresponding impacts of implementing best practices; 4) Planning knowledge mobilization and assessing sustainability. My fellowship will be supervised by the Founding President of CNS, Dr. Leah Gramlich and Dr. Heather Keller, Professor and Schlegel Research Chair in Nutrition and Aging at the University of Waterloo. Drs. Gramlich and Keller are international experts recognized for advancing malnutrition care and have over a decade of productive collaborations together. Through the University of Waterloo and the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, I will have access to additional training and professional development opportunities specific to aging. The proposed work for this fellowship will be used to improve the AMC initiative and demonstrate effectiveness of the mentor-champion model for scale and spread of best practices in hospitals. Ultimately, this project has the potential to improve hospital nutrition care across Canada and offers an ideal training environment that will synergize with my past experiences to prepare me for a career as an applied nutrition researcher blending health systems and academic research.