Newsworthy

Dear Community Partners,

Here are today’s updates:

• Raising Awareness about Malnutrition
• Current Status at Stormont Vail Health

Raising Awareness about Malnutrition

Stormont Vail Health team members spent a morning last week at the Kansas Statehouse participating in a proclamation ceremony to recognize Malnutrition Awareness Week in the state of Kansas.

Malnutrition Awareness Week is an annual, multi-organizational campaign that is slated for Sept. 19-23 of this year. Allison Gunnoe, a clinical dietitian at the Cotton O’Neil Cancer Center, submitted the request for Governor Laura Kelly to officially recognize this week in our state. She took this initiative because she wants to increase education on malnutrition and how it has an impact on everyone in the community and state.

“Malnutrition awareness is important to me as a dietitian as it directly impacts the patients that I provide medical nutrition therapy for,” said Allison. “Additionally, with the pandemic and current environment we are in, there has been an increase in food insecurity and there is likely some unrecognized malnutrition within the community.”

Dietitians at Stormont Vail and in the community screen every patient for malnutrition risk and implement necessary nutrition interventions in order to prevent or improve malnutrition.

“As a cancer center dietitian, nutrition status plays a vital role in terms of a patient’s tolerance of treatment and overall outcome, and even plays a role in survivorship,” stated Allison.

Malnutrition can come in all shapes and sizes. Allison notes that using this awareness week will help educate people on key risk factors such as unintentional weight loss, decreased nutrient intake, weakness and fatigue, fluid accumulation, and muscle and fat loss. She also wants to use this week to recognize the populations who may be at risk, like those with chronic kidney disease, lung disease, and diabetes, people with cancer or dementia, and those who encounter social and environmental factors limiting food accessibility.

Requesting this proclamation from the Governor shows how our team’s dedication goes above and beyond caring for our community and patients. We are so proud of Allison and the team who worked to make this proclamation happen as we prepare to now formally recognize Malnutrition Awareness Week in Kansas.

Current Status at Stormont Vail Health

The weekly COVID-19 scorecard is posted on the Stormont Vail website. Here are highlights are from the scorecard:

• 8 inpatients are COVID-19 positive. This is down from 13 last week.
• 96% of recent COVID-19 admissions are unvaccinated or had last dose/booster more than 6 months ago.
• COVID-19 inpatient discharges (previous week): 22. Deaths: 1.
• 3 COVID-19 positive patients in the outpatient Enhanced Primary Care program.
• 18.7% of people tested for COVID-19 at Stormont Vail facilities the past seven days were positive. That is similar to 18.2% last week.
• 43 team members and 6 providers on contact leave for COVID-19. The total of 49 people on contact leave this week is similar to 46 last week.
• 409 vaccinations (included boosters) administered.
• To schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment:
  • Use online scheduling assistant at stormontvail.org/covid19/vaccine
  • Call (785) 270-4786.

We together,
Dr. Kenagy