Initial Proposal:
NHS North Central London/Islington’s Public Health team aims to launch a multi-faceted Behaviour Change Programme “Active Lives: Active Travel” to NHS staff in Islington as part of the NHS Sports & Physical Activity Challenge. The second strand of Active Lives: Active Travel is aimed at target communities with co-morbidities to increase their physical activity as part of reducing the burden of disease caused by obesity. This funding application concerns the programme for NHS staff.
Using the New Year and the 2012 Olympic games as an opportunity to encourage physical activity, the scheme will seek to improve health through focusing on increasing the proportion of staff walking more within the working day, and cycling to increase levels of physical activity as recommended by the CMO physical activity guidance.
Working in partnership with LB of Islington.
Costing:
Cycle training session x48 £1200, MyBike maintenance session x3 £112.50, Walk Fit Bug (Pedometer)x 2 £98, Promotional posters and leaflets, 500Total Spend £1910.50
The Pan London Funding will be used to deliver the first phase of the Programme between November11-April12, linked to cycling.
The specific objectives are:
1. Active Travel: On your Bike- To promote the health and economic benefits of cycling- To increase the number of staff undertaking cycling training- To increase awareness of local incentives and services that are available to cycle users in Islington- To recruit local NHS cycling champions
- With matched funds from Islington Council, Islington’s Public Health team are proposing to fund 48 cycle training sessions and 3 maintenance sessions for 24 members of staff.
2. Active Travel: Walking Works :- To promote the health and economic benefits of walking- To increase the number of staff walking more during the working day- To recruit local NHS walking champions
Communication & Media- Promotional materials for Active Travel: On your Bike & Walking Works will include Posters placed at various sites and NHS offices - Electronic communication will include promoting Active Travel on the internet, NCL intranet and the weekly GP Bulletin.
Key stakeholders- Kemi Legbe- Project Manager, Public Health Islington- John Thorne from LBI Leisure team will assist in the promotion of Active Travel: Walking Works initiatives, he is also a member of Pro-Active Islington and chairs the Staff & Well Being Forum.
- Islington’s Public Health team will also work in partnership with Dave Shannon, LBI Cycling Officer who will be delivering cycling training and maintenance sessions to NHS staff.
- Islington Public Health’s Behavioural Change team and NHS North Central London Communications will assist in kind with disseminating details of the Programmes to NHS staff through multimedia.
Update on On your Bike:
Progress
42% of staff have participated in cycling initiative, by taking part in cycling and attending promotional events.
Barriers
Confidence in cycling proved to be barrier so training overcome this
Distance: The survey was also able to identify 60% of those that completed the survey live between 1- 4 miles from work and approximately 20% live 10-20 miles away from work. Identifying how far people live from work may help to overcome barriers to cycling to work such as distance.
Child care responsibilities
Overcoming
People would be encouraged to cycle to work if they saw improved cycle paths, safer better lit paths.
Walking Works update (June 2012)
Wanted to offer consistent activities that staff could get involved in over the year.
So second strand of the initiatives is walking works which is still a work in progress at time of writing, leading up to Walk to Work week.
Preliminary data has been collected, survey on current walking levels, identify those that don’t walk to work, why not.
Hoping from this data we can identify the barriers, to walking to work overcome them by providing tailored initiative
This links well with the NHS Walking Challenge.Its all about trying to pass on an increased awareness about the benefits of walking. This took place on May 17th and attracted over 70 staff from the NHS & Borough. All entrants were required to give their email addresses as part of signing up which also allowed us to follow through with a survey about the activity, their intentions regarding walking in the future and for ideas on future work-health topics we could facilitate in the future.
A lunchtime walk took place as part of the activity, followed by a healthy lunch and opportunity to visit a number of walking related information stalls.
It is hoped that we will be able to refresh the number of walking champions we have in the Borough as a result of this event.
Cross site
One great thing that has come out of the initiative is the partnership that has grown between council and NHS Islington’ Public Health - delivering cycling training and maintenance sessions to NHS staff.
The Leisure team are also involved with providing the Lunch time walks available to NHS Staff from which it is hoped that NHS Walking Champions can be recruited.
Match funding was obtained through the NHS Travel Network’s Pan London Fund and was awarded to fund active travel initiatives so we focussed on cycling by providing training sessions as well walking.
Other key partnerships were with the communications team -
Using e-bulletins & creating posters and adding news items to the intranet about events so that all staff were aware of the initiative
The Future?
As NHS staff all migrate to new destinations during 2012-13 we are confident that Islington public health-led projects will continue to be developed jointly with our borough colleagues.