Minutes:
The Board received a presentation from Melanie J Davies CBE on behalf of the Cities Changing Diabetes Group.
During the presentation is was noted that:-
· The Cities Changing Diabetes Programme (CCDP) aimed to address the global problem and most pressing health challenge of the decade. 425m people globally had diabetes and this was projected to reach 629m by 2045. The majority of people with diabetes lived in urban areas.
· Leicester was the 1st city to join the UK programme which was the first of its kind to create a platform partnership for cross-disciplinary and cross sector collaboration. The programme aimed to map the problem in five ‘study cities’, share learning experiences with many cities around the world and act as a catalyst to meaningful action which could defeat the incidence of urban diabetes.
· Leicester Changing Diabetes had been launched in May and was a true collaboration of sports organisations, faith centres and health organisations. The initiative aimed to create a new paradigm for tackling diabetes involving all the partners and their services and initiatives to reduce the incidence of diabetes in the urban environment.
· Leicester was the 1st city in the world where the four elite sports teams for football, rugby union basketball and cricket had signed up to the initiative to work together with all the other partners.
· Leicester was the only city to put up programme to look at Type 2 Diabetes in children.
· The project focused on raising awareness, educating and training communities to deliver Type 2 diabetes prevention and lifestyle education in the City through school-based offerings, healthy food environments, community-based programmes and increasing the uptake and use of local amenities and services.
· Research had shown that:-
o There were higher number of cases of diabetes and obesity in Leicester where people lived within 500m of a fast food outlet; and
o The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in Leicester in neighbourhoods with a higher provision of green spaces was 5% lower than areas with the lowest green space provision.
· The work in Leicester was already receiving international recognition.
The Chair commented he was delighted the City Council was part of initiative and the benefits that have already been seen through the leverage of the partnerships with the professional sporting clubs in Leicester in promoting health and education of the issues. This work had already highlighted a deficiency of services for the elderly population and there were now walking cricket, football and basketball initiatives to promote healthier lifestyles for the elderly. He was also pleased to be attending a summit next month in Westminster.
Members of the commented that:-
· That whilst fast food outlets and lower green spaces could be mapped and matched in social economic terms it was important to not drawn the wrong conclusion but recognise all factors involved as it may be that the issue was more linked to people’s financial opportunity to access both the food and the lifestyle that makes a difference.
· The data around the prevalence of obesity in Year 6 and reception ages it did not follow the same pattern of socio-economic deprivation that were seen in other health models and there were specific differences within it, such as areas having lower rates of obesity, but higher rates of other health related and socio-economic issues and was any work being done to explore those differences to see what has worked in those areas and could be extrapolated to other areas.
In response it was stated that:-
· Childhood obesity was not a simple issue and was multi factorial. Type 2 diabetes was linked to social deprivation as well and it was recognised that there also some issues around awareness and safe walking areas and that exposure to fast food outlets not a simple causal effect.
· Some excellent work was taking place with schools’ youth sports trust and to work with teenagers. In the younger age group there was less research results available. Measuring obesity especially within specific groups was not entirely clear, but there some ongoing projects with young children to understand what drivers and social determinants and other factors were contributing to these variants.
· A statistician and analyst had been appointed to support this research and to identify the quick wins and opportunities that could be achieved through the sports clubs and faith centres. It was recognised that these conversations had only started recently but they were already having an amplifying effect for what could be achieved in the future.
· The conversations with the sports clubs had been particularly useful to match the data with their history of working with some schools particularly where there were incidents of higher levels of obesity in schools where they were already and identifying what could be done differently to address this.
· The sports clubs had already indicated that they were going to launch projects in the two most deprived schools and were working in collaboration with the researcher. It was felt that this would make a real difference in the future.
RESOLVED:-
That everyone involved be thanked for their participation in scheme and the initiatives and joint working to take the project forward.