Welcome to A.S.P.E.N.'s January 2010 Advocacy and Public Policy Highlights. This is a very exciting time for us in terms of healthcare reform and the focus on malnutrition. Our volunteers have been working hard to achieve our strategic goal of increasing advocacy and public policy efforts. This newsletter brings you an update on many of the program initiatives and provides ideas on how you can get involved. Please feel free to send us your comments and suggestions so that we can better serve your needs.

Peggi Guenter, PhD, RN, CNSN
Director, Clinical Practice, Advocacy, and Research Affairs
peggig@aspen.nutr.org

Have you visited the new Public Policy and Advocacy section on the A.S.P.E.N. website? It contains information on the program and agenda, copies of past Advocacy and Public Policy newsletters, and a Call-to-Action tool with details on how to contact your federal and state legislators and executive leaders about key issues. This Call-to-Action suggests relevant issues, tips for correspondence, as well as a sample letter. Take a look and see how easy it is to get involved.

From March 7-8, 2010, two members of the A.S.P.E.N. Public Policy Committee will serve as the organization's representatives to the Digestive Disease National Coalition's (DDNC) Public Policy Forum on Capitol Hill, addressing key issues in clinical nutrition. The representatives willcommunicate our mission of helping to create an environment in which every patient receives safe, efficacious, and high quality care.

A.S.P.E.N.'s Public Policy and Advocacy Agenda:

• Improve quality and safety for all patients and consumers receiving nutrition support; 

• Advocate for fair reimbursement to ensure that beneficiaries of government; funded health programs receive the highest quality nutrition support care; 

• Sponsor the concept of a fair marketplace that does not jeopardize the provision of safe and quality nutrition support;

• Promote continued federal funding for nutrition and metabolic research and training.

A.S.P.E.N. will voice five specific priorities at this year's DDNC Public Policy Forum:

1. Improving funding for education, training and research in nutrition support 

2. Changing Medicare guidelines to: 

   • Eliminate enteral nutrition from competitive bidding under Medicare Part B 

   • Support the Medicare Home Infusion Therapy Coverage Act of 2009 (H.R. 574/S. 254)

3. Advancing information technology and safe practice issues 

4. Monitoring and influencing development of new nutrition billing codes 

5. Promoting evidence-based practice in nutrition support

If you can't attend CNW10 in person, consider joining us through our new CNW10 Virtual Conference, which can be accessed from a computer anywhere in the world.  A demo is available online.

Join us virtually and:

• Attend ten real-time education sessions via an online auditorium 

• Interact with attendees via text or voice chat before, during, and after each session 

• Ask questions to leading researchers, dietitians, physicians, clinicians, and other experts 

• Earn continuing education credits (visit www.nutritioncare.org/cnw for details) 

• Receive one year of free access to the CNW10 Online Library, which will feature the audio recording and slides from each presentation.

A.S.P.E.N. members pay only $350 to register. That's only $35 per course, plus you receive one year of free access to the CNW10 Online Library.

In November-December of 2009, A.S.P.E.N. leadership provided comments to the Federal Register notice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's draft guidelines entitled "Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections." The last version of this document was published in 2002. These leaders included members of the Clinical Practice and Public Policy Committees, the Board of Directors, and other select members of A.S.P.E.N.Thanks so much to all reviewers for their expertise on this important clinical document.

A.S.P.E.N. will award the second annual Lyn Howard Nutrition Support Consumer Advocacy Award during Clinical Nutrition Week 2010 in Las Vegas. This recognition acknowledges a patient, family member and/or a caregiver who works tirelessly for regulatory change and/or to increase funding and research for clinical nutrition.

The 2010 Lyn Howard Award will be granted posthumously to Lee Koonin. Unfortunately she passed away recently and her husband will accept it on her behalf.

Home Parenteral Nutrition (PN) was not common in 1977 when Ms. Koonin first started on this therapy. She founded the Lifeline Foundation, a consumer advocacy organization, and opened her life and medical history to others in order to help advance this therapy.

Ms. Koonin was a guest on numerous TV shows including Good Morning America where she discussed the value of PN and established herself as a role model. She also addressed medical societies including A.S.P.E.N., and when Catastrophic Insurance was being considered by Congress in 1981, she testified in front of the House Health Subcommittee.  Clearly her speech impacted the future of employment by addressing that people who were forced to be declared "disabled" in order to finance the substantial cost of home parenteral nutrition were actually "enabled" as a result of the nutrition. Ms. Koonin encouraged legislation to protect these differently-abled individuals by allowing them to work while retaining benefits under catastrophic insurance.

A.S.P.E.N.'s President Steve McClave has appointed a Blue Ribbon Malnutrition Task Force to address and coordinate the many malnutrition related initiatives that A.S.P.E.N. is involved with either independently or with other organizations. This stellar group will be led by co-chairs Gordon Jensen and Ainsley Malone, and will meet for the first time at CNW10 in Las Vegas. We will keep you up-to-date as this group's work unfolds.

A.S.P.E.N.'s Practice Management Task Force paper on Nutrition Support Teams was presented and approved by the A.S.P.E.N. Board of Directors. This document is a report on the current state of Nutrition Support Teams; the content is based on survey data collected last summer along with a review of the literature on the efficacy of Nutrition Support Teams. The paper will be published in the February issue of Nutrition in Clinical Practice (NCP). We look forward to your feedback on this team data and review.

A.S.P.E.N., along with more than 500 other national, state and community organizations, is proud to participate in the third annual National Healthcare Decisions Day on Friday, April 16, 2010.  The National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) Initiative is a collaborative effort of national, state and community organizations committed to ensuring that all adults with decision-making capacity in the United States have the information and opportunity to communicate and document their healthcare decisions. The goal is to encourage all of our members to complete their own advance directives so that we may be better equipped to answer questions and assist patients in completing their advance directives.  Visit the National Healthcare Decisions Day website for more information about this program and the advanced directives process.