Excellence in National or Local Education Meetings/Stand-Alone Events

Summary of work

The prevalence and dangers of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency are not well recognised in the UK, particularly for at-risk groups such as pregnant women, infants, children and adolescents. The Getting Vitamin D Right from the Start national meeting in May 2019 aimed to engage with primary and secondary care HCPs treating these patients, to raise awareness, and improve identification and management of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency.

The RCP-accredited national meeting was the first to focus on challenges around deficiency in the early years of life specifically and to provide clarity around existing guidelines. Content from this highly successful meeting was adapted to form flexible local meeting modules for regional roll-out. 40 of these have now been completed, meaning in total >400 target HCPs have engaged with the educational content in the last 12 months. More meetings are planned during 2020.

Feedback from both the national and regional meetings has shown the content is creating new awareness of the silent, but deadly, nature of vitamin D insufficiency/ deficiency, its impact on younger at-risk groups (and on pregnant women) and its potentially devastating outcomes. This is further reflected by reported changes in practice to improve management of this wholly reversible problem.

Judges' comments

The Getting Vitamin D Right from the Start meeting adopted a simple, fresh but highly effective approach to address an area of very high unmet needs.  A much-needed intervention in this area.