Conferences and Events
Public Health Wales Practitioner Update, 5 September 2013, Llandrindod Wells
On 5 September 2013 the Physical Activity and Nutrition Network hosted an information update event for Public Health Practitioners working in the field of Physical Activity and Nutrition.
The event was aimed at Local Public Health Wales directors, specialists and practitioners working on the food and physical activity agenda across Wales and provided an opportunity to hear from national agencies working on these key issues which impact at the local level.
The event was well attended and a varied selection of presentations given. The presentations are available by clicking on the links below.
Update from the Health Improvement Division – Maureen Howell, Head of Lifestyle Change, Welsh Government
Public Health Nutrition and Dietetics, the all Wales approach – Judith John, Consultant Dietitian, Public Health Wales and Lisa Williams, All Wales Nutrition Training Facilitator
Actif Woods Wales – Jo Cooper, Actif Woods Wales Assistant Coordinator and Dr Kate Hamilton, Research Officer
Lets Walk Cymru – Melanie Jones, Lets Walk Cymru Development Officer
Come Outside! – Juliet Michael, Come Outside! Programme Manager
Update from Communities First Programme – Paul Dear, Communities Division, Welsh Government
Community Food Cooperative Programme – Hannah James, Rural Regeneration Unit
Update from Sport Wales – Mark Frost, Director Sport Wales
Update from the National Exercise Referral Scheme – Jeannie Wyatt-Williams, National Exercise Referral Coordinator
Healthy Start Vitamins Workshop, 23 April 2013, Cardiff
On 23 April 2013, representatives from Local Health Boards, Public Health Wales and the Welsh Government took part in a workshop to address the uptake issue of Healthy Start Vitamins.
Healthy Start is a UK-wide statutory scheme which provides a nutritional “safety net” for vulnerable pregnant women, new mothers and children in receipt of benefits. Those eligible get free vouchers every week to spend on milk, plain fresh and frozen fruit and vegetables, and infant formula milk, plus coupons for free vitamins.
Healthy Start vitamins contain the appropriate amount of recommended vitamins A, C and D for children aged from six months to four years, and folic acid and vitamins C and D for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
These provide an important source of vitamin D. There is evidence of vitamin D deficiency in the population and the four UK Chief Medical Officers wrote to health professionals in February 2012 to emphasise this growing public health concern.
Despite this, the uptake of Healthy Start vitamins in Wales is very low. It is estimated that of those eligible, only about 1% are taking Healthy Start vitamins.
Presentations were given by Eleanor McGee, Public Health Nutrition Lead at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust and Helen Nicholls, Chief Community Dietitian for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board.
Eleanor McGee, Public Health Nutrition Lead at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Trust has been working to improve vitamin D uptake since 2006. She began the day by providing a basic overview of vitamin D: what it does, how it is made in the body and why many people are deficient. Population groups most at risk of deficiency, the health implications of being deficient and the importance of vitamin supplementation in preventing these conditions were highlighted. Further to this, national policies around supplementation and other national campaigns were mentioned.
Helen Nicholls, Chief Community Dietitian for Cardiff & Vale UHB presented the results of the Cardiff Vitamins Project, an 18 month pilot scheme in Cardiff funded by the Welsh Government. The project enabled all eligible women and children access to vitamins, not just those within Healthy Start.
The key aims of the pilot were to:
• Explore how best to distribute the vitamins across Cardiff to make them as accessible as possible, particularly to vulnerable groups
• Raise awareness of the importance of the vitamins among health professionals and families
Helen provided some background to vitamin D deficiency in Cardiff and the challenges posed by the current Healthy Start model. Issues were highlighted around distribution, access to vitamins, vitamin shelf life, lack of awareness and audit mechanisms. Helen discussed how the pilot scheme addressed these issues with new vitamin issue pathways being developed as well as resources to train health professionals and raise public awareness. The issuing of vitamins was closely documented, and qualitative data was also obtained from parents and health professionals.
The headline data after 12 months showed that:
- 20% of children under 4 years in Cardiff received at least one bottle of healthy start vitamins
- 37% of Flying Start children in Cardiff received at least one bottle of HS vitamins
- 5877 pots of Healthy Start children’s vitamins were issued to eligible children
- 4029 pots of Healthy Start women’s vitamins were issued to eligible women.
Helen shared the lessons learned from the evaluation process and possible solutions to address the current problem of vitamin deficiency.
Eleanor gave a further presentation on the Public Health Action programme in Birmingham to increase vitamin D uptake. She gave an overview of the programme which included free vitamin supplementation to all pregnant women, all post natal women for 1 year and all children under 5. She discussed the campaigns focus on increasing awareness among the public and health professionals, as well as increasing access to, and availability of, vitamins. Eleanor talked about the steps taken to achieve these goals such as engaging with local media, producing leaflets and adverts as well as briefings for health visiting teams, midwifery, Children Centre staff and health centre receptionists. Furthermore, increased access and availability by increasing the number of issuing sites for vitamins, which included Health Centres, Children’s Centres, pharmacies and some GP practices was achieved.
The afternoon provided participants with the opportunity to begin work on developing implementation plans within their areas.
Presentations:
Evidence for Vitamin D Supplementation – Eleanor McGee
Cardiff Vitamins Project – Helen Nicholls
Vitamin D Policy and Campaign 2006-2013 – Eleanor McGee
If you would like to provide further feedback to the Welsh Government, please contact Nicola Menage at
[email protected]
Innovate to Activate - BHFNC 12th Annual Conference
The British Heart Foundation National Centre (BHFNC) 12th Annual Conference was held on the 22 November 2012 at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham. The theme of the conference was ‘New ways to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour’ and included a range of keynote speeches, case studies and breakout sessions.
Keynote speeches were presented by Professor Stuart Biddle (Loughborough University) speaking on why sedentary behaviour is a risk to health and suggesting innovative ways for breaking up sitting time. Dr Simon Marshall (University of California San Diego) discussed the growing range of new technologies available for physical activity promotion and offered suggestions for their use and Alison Hardy (Headstrong Thinking) demonstrated the ways in which Change4Life has used marketing to change behaviour and how the programme has evolved over time.
The keynote and workshop presentations can be viewed on the BHFNC website.
8th Annual Meeting and Symposium of HEPA Europe
The Physical Activity and Nutrition Networks for Wales hosted the 8th annual meeting and symposium of the European Network for the Promotion of Health-Enhancing Physical Activity (HEPA Europe) on the 26th and 27th September 2012.
Click here for further information.
Celebrating Change4Life in Wales
A series of regional Supporter Events in Autumn 2011 gave an opportunity for supporters to network whilst being updated on recent developments within Change4Life in Wales. Along with hearing about how Change4Life is being extended to adults, delegates were able to celebrate achievements, share experiences and hear how social media could be used to promote Change4Life messages.
For more information about Change4Life in Wales visit the Change4Life website.
An Introduction to Evaluation for Community Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiatives: Day 1
Gave an overview of the process and stages of evaluating a community based initiative, focusing on interactive case studies.
The workshop explained different types of evaluation, what to evaluate, how to use the findings and ethical considerations. It described and applied an evaluation framework to case studies of nutrition and physical activity initiatives. There was plenty of opportunity for discussions and networking.
This workshop is essential for community practitioners with no formal training in evaluation or in need of a refresher.
Evaluation for Community Nutrition and Physical Activity Initiatives Workshop: Day 2
This workshop aimed to increase participant’s confidence, knowledge and skills in developing an appropriate evaluation
design for the purpose of evaluating nutrition and physical activity programmes and interventions.
The workshop further considered measuring progress and effectiveness. It provided a summary and critical analysis
of specific tools and methods in nutrition and physical activity, focusing on the evidence base:
- Dietary assessment techniques
- Validated self report questionnaires in general health and wellbeing, fruit and vegetable intake and physical activity
- Measures of fitness and body fat
- The food and physical activity environment
- New and innovative methods
- Designing and analysing questionnaires and focus groups specific for each initiative.
BME Workshops
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) Wales and the Physical Activity and Nutrition Networks for Wales co-hosted a two-part workshop around Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Groups dietary interventions in Cardiff in December 2009 and February 2010.
The aim of the workshop was to disseminate and discuss the outcomes of a review of dietary interventions in black and minority ethnic (BME) groups published by FSA Wales in 2009. This review was conducted by Lynn Stockley Associates and the first part of the workshop included a presentation by Lynn with recommendations. The review makes six recommendations for future dietary interventions in BME groups; the recommendations focus on the importance of using appropriate evaluation and community engagement methods and tools and behavioural change models to ensure an effective intervention. Presentations were given on these topics by Lynn Stockley, Mandy Williams of Participation Cymru, Quam Zaidi of the British Heart Foundation and Sally-Ann Baker of Glyndwr University.
Delegates also heard case study presentations given by Clive Gray, Bristol Primary Care Trust (PCT) Salt Partnership Project and by Azmina Govindji, British Heart Foundation Social Cooking Project. The Salt Partnership Project involved recruiting and training local peer facilitators to work with specific BME communities on a salt awareness programme, including cooking and shopping skills. The British Heart Foundation Social cooking Project was run in Bradford, Birmingham and London. It focused on raising heart health awareness, specifically the impact of high levels of salt used in Sikh and Hindu social cooking at their places of worship, and set out to provide practical help to reduce the salt and fat used by these groups. It also held seminars to encourage worshippers to take the low salt and fat messages home. A recipe book ‘Healthy meals, healthy heart’ was produced.
Download a
summary report of the workshops.
For more information please contact Hilary Neathey at the Food Standards Agency Wales on
[email protected].
ALPHA Project Final Symposium – Stockholm November 6th 2009
The ALPHA (Assessing Levels of Physical Activity & fitness at population level) project is a Europe-wide project established under the auspices of the EU in 2007. It was established to develop and test a comprehensive set of assessment methodologies for measuring physical activity at a population level.
A wide range of commonly used instruments were reviewed including measures of physical activity relating to particular populations such as children and older people, measures related to the urban environment & transport and measures of health related fitness.
A number of academic institutions from around Europe conducted wide ranging literature reviews and the findings were disseminated at a final conference at the organising institution, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Amongst the key findings were:
• The IPAQ (International Physical Activity Questionnaire) in both the Long & the Short form was the most commonly used instrument. However the researchers found there were significant variations in the use of the instrument with a third of those reviewed modifying it and a further third applying major deviations thus making any findings useless for comparability. Specific problems appeared to be associated with compliance with the protocols and a diversity of methods used for data cleansing and analysis. There were also issues related to the ‘self report’ method. A key recommendation was the need to minimise the potential problems associates with self reporting.
• The emphasis to date has been on measuring physical activity levels, new research has identified that levels and patterns of sedentary behaviour is an equally important predictor of health outcomes and should also be considered when measuring health related behaviour.
• A single ‘best’ representation of physical activity does not exist. Maximum information is obtained when multiple aspects of physical activity are assessed.
• Accelerometery tests show less subjective results than ‘self-report’ measures and therefore differences are less marked. They are also useful for measuring ‘sedentary’ activity although they tend to miss upper body movement and cannot distinguish between load carrying or not and are therefore not good for measuring total activity or expenditure.
• There were limited measures for work related physical activity and no common question in the instruments reviewed. There is no optimal occupational physical activity question for general surveillance.
• 89 different instruments were identified for measuring physical activity in children with only a minority that had some level of reliability or validity. These included; The Teen Health Survey (14-17 yr olds), the Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance System (YRBSS) with 4 questions related to physical activity, and the PAQ-C (8 – 14yrs) and PAQ-A (14 – 18yrs) although the latter is limited to the school year.
• Self-report shouldn’t be used in children under 12yrs; objective measures are the most appropriate.
More information on the ALPHA project can be found at www.thealphaproject.eu
Obesity: Is it all in the mind? CPD Event
The Physical Activity and Nutrition Networks for Wales with the Professional and Organisational Development team at the Wales Centre for Health ran a CPD Event “Obesity: is it all in the Mind?” which was facilitated by Dr Katie Thirlaway and Dr Caroline Limbert of the Centre for Psychology, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.
The event was run on 23 March 2009 and 14 May 2009. There were around 45 delegates overall, largely practitioners who co-ordinate or work on weight management and obesity prevention programmes.
The focus of the day was the importance of behaviour change approaches to developing and implementing effective interventions for the prevention and management of obesity.
For more information contact the Project Team.
Working Together to Plan a Healthy Wales
120 delegates attended the Working Together to Plan a Healthy Wales Conference, on 12 March 2008 in Brangwyn Hall, Swansea.
It was a very full agenda, and some lively discussion was generated.
Below are the presentations from the day (English Only)
| Working Together to Improve Food Access | Angela Blair, Suzanne Clark, Richard White |
| Improving Partnerships | Carwyn Young |
| Sustainable Communities | Dafydd Thomas and Steve Garrett |
The Conference art is now also available to download.
PANW Conference
150 delegates attended the Behaviour Change :Putting Theory into Action conference on 26 February at the Millenium Stadium.
The morning session explored 3 areas of Behaviour Change Theory, and delegates had the opportunity to attend workshops in the afternoon looking at how the theory can be turned into action.
The presentations from the event are accessible from the links below, and these will shortly include those from the workshops.
Many thanks to all who attended for making this a dynamic and informative event.
See the events section for other relevant conferences.
Last updated:
10/09/2013
