New International Healthcare Catering Alliance Launched
July 20th, 2004 witnessed the inauguration of a major new alliance between healthcare caterers from across the globe.
Senior representatives and Chairpersons from six major national healthcare catering associations agreed to form and become active members of HEALTHCARE CATERERS INTERNATIONAL (HCI) at a meeting held in Reno, Nevada and hosted to coincide with the largest annual healthcare catering event to be held in the US - The Dietary Managers Association (DMA) Conference.
The six founding member organizations are:
- Dietary Managers Association, USA.
- Meals On Wheels Association of America, USA.
- Canadian Society of Nutrition Management, Canada.
- Institute of Hospitality in Healthcare Limited, Australia.
- Hospital Caterers Association, UK.
- National Association of Care Catering, UK.
HEALTHCARE CATERERS INTERNATIONAL (HCI) will take the form of an international alliance of member associations and as such, an HCI board has been formed to strengthen this co-operation and capitalize on the group’s potential for information, best practice and knowledge sharing.
Currently, HCI is chaired by Colleen Zenk (a former Chair of the DMA, USA), vice-chaired by Alison McCree (current Chair of the Hospital Caterers Association, UK) and administered by William St. John (current CEO of the DMA) as Executive Officer. Each founding organization is represented on the board by its respective national representative or president.
Following on from the meeting, Colleen commented ‘With the sharing of information, best practice and knowledge at the core of the alliances formation, we hope that over 20,000 individual members from all over the world will benefit considerably in the first year’. Online communication through the association’s website www.hciglobal.org will enable members to access a reference library & bookstore of global materials, discuss issues via ‘chat’ areas, and post information. The group’s upcoming employment site www.ientree.com will allow members to post their employment details, view global employment opportunities, and employers to recruit candidates for suitable positions.
To enable membership of HCI and access to its benefits to be provided, carefully chosen sponsorship has been sought from a selected number of global organizations and additional alliances have been formed with The Grossbauer Group (Chesterton, Indiana, US) and Complete Media & Marketing (Hertford, UK) to provide internet and print publishing assistance respectively.