About us - SSIEM-Dietitians Group
The SSIEM-Dietitians Group (SSIEM-DG) is a networking group for dietitians working in the field of inherited metabolic diseases (IMD). The group was initially founded in London, 2008 as the European Metabolic Dietitians Group and was established in 2010 as the first SSIEM working group (Chair: Reinhild Link) and has representation with Marjorie Dixon on the SSIEM Council. Currently SSIEM-DG has 29 corresponding members representing 15 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey. Membership is open to all dietitian members of the SSIEM. Communication will be through meetings and the newly developed web page on the SSIEM website (www.ssiem.org/dg/).
Aims
The aims of SSIEM-DG is to develop IMD dietetics to a highly scientific and professional level for the benefit of all SSIEM dietitians and their countries. Furthermore, to develop training standards for IMD dietitians, facilitate communication and educational courses, share knowledge, discuss and publicise best practice to ultimately improve the nutritional management and long-term outcome of IMD patients. As a consequence of the limited IMD dietetic training opportunities and wide differences in training standards the SSIEM-DG plans to develop core IMD training standards and validate the training of IMD dietitians. SSIEM–DG aims to promote the important role of metabolic dietitians as key members of all IMD teams
History
The formation of an European Metabolic Dietitians Group (EMDG) was agreed at the International Congress of the Society for the Study of Inborn Errors of Metabolism (SSIEM) in Hamburg in 2007 and it was established with an enthusiastic group of dietitians (K. Ahring, A.Clark, M.Dixon, K. Dokoupil, A.Fekete, P. Jacobs, R.Link, A. Mac Donald, M.van Rijn) in London in March 2008. Dr. Reinhild Link from Germany was assigned first Chair of EMDG.
In the same year the first EMDG Workshop organized by the newly formed Dietitians Group took place at SSIEM congress in Lisboa in September 2008. The Workshop was organized with the colleagues from Portugal M. Almeida and J. Rocha and also M. Dixon (UK), R Link (Germany), A. MacDonald (UK) and M.van Rijn (Netherlands). The main topic of the workshop was fatty acid oxidation disorders with reviews of the dietary management in the US by Rani Singh and in Germany (Europe) by Ute Spiekerkötter and in the Netherlands by van der Louw. In addition free presentations selected from abstracts sent to the congress were presented.
An informal meeting of EMDG took place with an increased number of dietitians, delegates from 12 countries. We met for the first time with Dr. Rani Singh, the founder and former president of GMDI (Genetic Metabolic Dietitians Intenational) and we exchanged experiences with the formation of the international dietitians group. There was interest to work closely together and to exchange experiences with GMDI.
During the next EMDG meeting in London in March 2009 the number of delegates were increased by colleagues from Poland, Hungary and France. The training possibilities of IMD in the different European countries were discussed and were gathered from the different countries. The summary of the training possibilities for IMD dietitians in Europe was presented by Anita MacDonald, Birmingham at the Dietitians Workshop of ICIEM congress in San Diego in August 2009.
In the same year it was decided to be under the umbrella of SSIEM and in 2010 EMDG was established as the first SSIEM working group, named SSIEM-Dietitians Group, with representation of Marjorie Dixon (London) on the SSIEM Council. The inaugural meeting of SSIEM-DG was held at the SSIEM conference in Istanbul in September 2010.