Dear members  I hope this email finds you all well.  I trust that you are looking forward to our BSPGHAN Annual Meeting 27-29th April. If you already registered for January, there's no need to re-register for April.  A reminder that accepted abstracts will be published in Frontline Gastroenterology. I hope that you are making regular use of your access to the journal and enjoying the brilliant educational material that is accessed via our members login page?  Please see Highlights for Members – Publishing Papers to Impact on Practice for March 2021 sent from the Editor in Chief, Professor Mark Beattie.   Best wishes  Sue  BSPGHAN President.  Dear Colleagues  I wanted to highlight some of our recent published content that I thought would be of interest  The gut microbiome: what every gastroenterologist needs to know https://fg.bmj.com/content/12/2/118 Getting to grips with sarcopenia: recent advances and practical management for...

Dear members Children who are CEV & vaccination advice Following our involvement in the development of the College's advice on children and young people who are clinically extremely vulnerable, I would like to highlight the College's recent statement on the COVID-19 vaccination programme. As you will be aware, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that those who are clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) and aged 16+ should be vaccinated as part of priority group 4, alongside those aged 70-74. JCVI's advice is available here. The College supports JCVI's approach on vaccine prioritisation, and we'd encourage you to follow that. It is essential that the programme is guided by evidence and we expect to see more safety and efficacy data gathered in the next few months that will inform vaccination strategies for groups not covered by this first phase (such as children and young people under 16 who are CEV). The RCPCH also wanted to flag with you that it...

BSPGHAN Council are delighted to announce that we have consolidated an affiliation with Frontline Gastroenterology. FG is an official publication of the British Society of Gastroenterology  and is a companion journal to Gut and BMJ Open Gastroenterology. Frontline Gastroenterology publishes articles that accelerate adoption of innovative and best practice in the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology and clinical nutrition. Frontline Gastroenterology is especially interested in articles on multidisciplinary research and care, focusing on both retrospective assessments of novel models of care as well as putative future directions of best practice. The journal also publishes articles in the domains of clinical quality, patient experience, service provision and medical education. This arrangement offers an exciting opportunity for BSPGHAN members to receive Free access to the online publication as a benefit of membership. Access is via the secure member area on the BSPGHAN website-...

Dear members, Please accept our very best wishes for 2021 to you all from all on BSPGHAN council.As we enter the third national lockdown, with surges of cases of the new variant of Covid19 and rates of transmission high nationally, government has issued guidance on shielding for adults. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19 Importantly, since the first wave, our knowledge of COVID-19 has grown. We now know that very few children and young people are at highest risk of severe illness due to the virus. This means that the National Guidance for children and young people issued December 21 is current at the time of writing and I hope that it is useful for you to review it here- https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/covid-19-guidance-clinically-extremely-vulnerable-children-young-people The RCPCH guidance sets out that the...