Issue - meetings

-        Joanna Saunders to present

Joanna Saunders, Head of Health Improvements, gave the following powerpoint presentation:-

Why is Obesity a priority?

-          Public Health priority nationally and locally

-          Can have serious health consequences and impacts on health and social care services

-          Can be prevented and treated (NICE)

-          Impacts on emotional wellbeing

-          Impacts on the economy

What Does a Healthy Weight Framework look like?

-          Children

Tier 1 – Primary activity – School Nurse, GP, Health Visitor

Tier 2 – MoreLife Clubs

Tier 3 – Rotherham Institutes for Obesity

Tier 4 – MoreLife Residential Camps

-          Adults

Tier 1 – Primary activity – GP, Health Visitor, Leisure Services

Tier 2 – Reshape Rotherham

Tier 3 – Rotherham Institute for Obesity

Tier 4 – Specialist Obesity Service

What do we need to do?

-          Raise public awareness

-          Get more people to engage with services

-          Skill people up to live healthier lives

-          Make healthy choices the easy choices

-          Get everyone to recognise their role and act

-          Challenge cultural and “normal for Rotherham” behaviour

What are the current priorities?

-          Raise the profile of whole population prevention activity

-          Continue to provide a range of services for people who are already overweight or obese

-          Maximise the resources already available – training, signposting and referral

-          Agree our position on the impact of planning decisions, transport planning

Challenges

-          Preventing and treating childhood overweight and obesity in the primary school aged population

-          Whole family engagement

-          Changing behaviour amongst those that most need to change

-          Evidence of what really works

-          Funding to support grassroots initiatives

What can the Health and Wellbeing Board do?

-          Making Every Contact Count.  Power of partners

-          Recognition of the importance of health as a driver of deprivation

-          Political leadership

-          Collaborative commissioning

Health and Wellbeing Board Members commitment

-          Commit to all staff doing e-learning on MECC and giving feedback on their performance in signposting and referring to services

-          Introduce planning and licensing policy to restrict availability of fast food particularly near schools or in deprived communities and promoting use of green space

-          A concentrated effort to address the issue in the primary school population

Discussion ensued on the presentation with the following issues highlighted:-

·           Awareness was the big issue

·           The message was getting across but people failed to recognise they had a problem

·           Many did not have the skills or income to provide healthy food

Joanna was thanked for her presentation.