Originally published @ 11:24 am, Mon 25th Oct 2010
As part of the new focus on childhood obesity in Nottingham, I attended a conference on healthy weight hosted by Nottingham public services (19th October, 2010).
The conference began with a briefing from Dr. Ian Campbell, local GP and candidate for Labour in Newark at the last general election, pointing out that obesity levels have soared in England and that the percentages just keep going up.
Obesity is a medical problem, a legitimate, chronic disease with multiple causes; you start with understanding the basics like “energy in versus energy out” and then explore the environment that’s causing the growing problem and exploring the responsibilities for the problems, including those that lie with the state and those that are personal.
Blaming the patient is inappropriate and does not produce positive results. Especially since the presence of certain genes contribute to the probability of being overweight or obese.
Professor Sir Michael Marmot did the major study in this area (Fair Society, Healthy Lives, ) and recently wrote to the Observer re-iterating –
“simply telling people to behave more responsibly is no more likely to be effective than telling someone who is depressed to pull his socks up”
In showing the correlation between social factors and inequalities, with outcomes, the concept of disability free life expectancy was introduced alongside life expectancy (and it’s possible this concept needs exploring further).
Six realms if influence needed to be tackled – the government, educationalists, the food industry, the media, the NHS and the individual.
When asked to cites areas of biggest progress, Ian cited Finland (big campaign) and Singapore (but it’s a dictatorship). The notion of a fat tax is regressive. Yes, less meat, more fruit and vegetables, more activity and less refined sugars. But remember, most people didn’t buy MacDonald’s salads. And of course, health is the most valuable thing we have.
A presentation from the Department of Health was wide ranging and demonstrated good knowledge of what as being done.
But both presentations struggled from not being able to answer the question – what delivers big change. I believe that progress by schools and in exam results remains the best model to follow, with something akin to achieving 5 good GCSEs being required for improving not only health, but recognising the range of capabilities that people should be capable of.
In the afternoon,
· the importance of communications was stressed by CoI ( see “Communications and Behaviour Change; http://coi.gov.uk/press.php?release=324 and coi.gov.uk/behaviourchange ; and the Institute for Government’s MINDSPACES (see http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/content/133/mindspace-influencing-behaviour-through-public-policy )
· MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!) is a social enterprise dedicated to reducing global overweight and obesity levels. They highlighted their “healthy lifestyle check” and showing the raw amounts of sugar and sugar and oil that goes into a bag of Haribo Star Mix and a large bar of Dairy Milk Chocolate ( see http://www.mendprogramme.org/aboutmend ).
· The Food for Life partnership discussed their campaign for improving the quality of school dinners ( see http://www.foodforlife.org.uk/ ); their bronze award for schools dinners are those where the meals contain no undesirable food additives or hydrogenated fats;
· Sheffield – Let’s Change for Life – showed the depth and coverage of partnership work that had been put together to tackle obesity; ( see http://www.sheffieldc4l.org.uk/ ); they’re holding a free conference on 11th November.
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