Canadian Nutrition Society Dialogue on Disease Related Malnutrition: A Commentary from the 2022 Food For Health Workshop

This commentary represents a dialogue on key aspects of Disease Related Malnutrition (DRM) from leaders and experts from academia, health across disciplines and from several countries across the world. The dialogue illuminates the problem of DRM, what impact it has on outcome, nutrition care as a human right, and practice, implementation and policy approaches to address DRM. The dialogue allowed the germination of an idea to register a commitment through the Canadian Nutrition Society(CNS) and the Canadian Malnutrition Task Force (CMTF)in the UN/WHO Decade of Action on Nutrition to advance policy based approaches for DRM. This commitment was successfully registered in October of 2022 and is entitled CAN DReaM (Creating Alliances Nationally for Policy in Disease Related Malnutrition). This commitment details five goals that will be pursued in the Decade of Action on Nutrition. The intent of this commentary is to record the proceedings of the workshop as a stepping-stone to establishing a policy-based approach to DRM that is relevant in Canada and abroad.