The Scientific Social Planning Committee was in a fantastic position to design this programme, with over 270 abstracts representing a broad range of nutrition and dietetics areas, translating evidence to practice. When reviewing the abstract submissions, clear themes emerged, including those related to the nutrition and dietetics workforce and how to deliver effective outcomes that make meaningful differences to people's lives, while also equitable and sustainable. These papers challenge us to reflect on ourselves as health professionals, including our knowledge, how confident we are in what we do and what bias we may bring to the table when dealing with health issues, for example, in relation to weight management. Communication of nutrition and health messages similarly had strong contributions, from what goes onto food labels, the promotion of sustainable food choices and how we integrate technology into practice, for example, in text messaging breastfeeding mums and telephone health coaching. With e-health ‘here and now’, informatics is critical to what we do, and the 2013 nutrition informatics survey is a timely inclusion to the programme. A good range of papers cover clinical dietetic services from infants to the elderly, and scrutinies practice, including the tools used in the paediatric setting, to nutrition support strategies in dementia care. How as professionals we work with other health-care workers was highlighted, with many submissions related to practice in teams, with, for example, consideration of scope of practice of nutrition assistance to the implementation of protected meal times. With food in hospital critical to nutrition care, it is great to see papers that explore what happens when patients receive their meals, assess its quality and question staff attitude towards the meal served. Tackling the complex nutrition issues of vulnerable populations including food security and food literacy is well represented in the programme. Papers highlight the food and nutrition issues of migrant groups, how best to support emergency food relief and provide evidence to support best practice in nutrition and dietetics for persons with severe mental health illness. One of the biggest opportunities we have as a profession to make a tangible difference is in improving the nutritional status of our next generation, and it is exciting to see a solid contribution from researchers and practitioners in the area of maternal and child health. These papers are diverse and include issues of feeding practices from breastfeeding, branded food, fast food and snacking, as well as adolescents and food addiction. An important theme is nutrition and dietetics education, which supports not only our own evidence-based approach to practice, but also shapes our future profession. Papers submitted will stimulate nutrition and dietetics curriculum design, including of particular importance, how we prepare our future workforce to successfully tackle indigenous health. On behalf of the Science and Social Planning Committee, I would like to thank all those who contributed abstracts to this programme. We hope that you are challenged by the programme, and use this conference as an opportunity for rigorous debate and discussion, as well as networking. Importantly, by challenging your peers on how practice-based problems are approached and identifying gaps in the evidence to pose the research questions that must be answered for future practice, as a profession, we can make a positive contribution to health and wellbeing for all.