Agenda item

To monitor delivery of the Health & Wellbeing Strategy.

Heema Shukla updated Board members on Priority 5: Improve years lived with good health and happiness, with a focus on obesity and tobacco control work.

A system-wide approach had been taken to both areas of work, to support people who exhibited these behaviours to change their lifestyle. A whole-school approach to weight management was being used in schools also.

Officers involved in the tobacco control work aimed to broaden the smoking cessation service to include vapes or other tobacco use, using funding from the Department for Health and Social Care. A pilot was planned to support young people who used vapes and wanted to stop.

It was noted that hospitals were not able to prescribe oxygen support at home unless patients gave up vaping. The ICB were running a text messaging pilot to use connected care services to contact people who smoke to refer them to cessation services.

With regard to obesity services, the Board were asked to approve the next steps which could be funded by the public health grant.

Tanvi Barreto, Senior Public Health Strategist attended the meeting to speak on work to tackle obesity.

Work to address obesity included strategic level work as well as weight management programmes. The Council was developing a whole system approach to tackle obesity in collaboration with the University of Southampton. The first stage of this work was stakeholder mapping and the creation of a joint steering group, the second stage was stakeholder engagement, the third phase was to agree four strategic actions for Bracknell Forest and the fourth phase was to develop an action plan to take forward.

The actions had been agreed as follows:

·        The first action was to map the food environment of Bracknell Forest including any fast food outlets and other data including proximity to schools.

·        The second action was around enabling healthier diets, to work with local chefs to develop digital resources to share the weight loss journey.

·        The third action was to create a network of weight loss champions.

·        The fourth action was to work with supermarkets and shops locally to influence how food is displayed.

Weight management programmes also continued to run locally, including a children and young people specific group. There had been concern around referrals to the children and young people group, as frontline workers were not confident to raise issues around weight with families. A new approach had been taken through schools, including a 6-week programme on healthy diet and healthy lunchboxes, workshops with parents and staff, and both universal and targeted physical activity programmes.

The work was all being brought together into the community map which residents and professionals could access. 

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·        The programme had targets such as the number of people achieving 5% body weight loss. It had proven challenging to get the right data in place with the provider, and officers were working to improve this. Overall wellbeing was measured through the programmes also, which was showing improvement. People were also reported to do more physical activity after leaving the weight loss programme, and behavioural change and social interaction were monitored. The children and young people’s weight loss programme had been challenging due to slow referrals, and there was no data available on weight loss for children, although there was lots of qualitative data.

·        Part of the actions to map the food environment was to look at the healthiness of school canteen food.

·        Board members requested that in the next report, a summary could be included on the metric and any relevant performance indicators or ambitions.

Louise Duffy, Senior Public Health Strategist attended the meeting to give an update on the vaping and tobacco work.

Public health officers had worked to engage with young people on the issue of vaping and why it is so appealing to them. Arising from the work and the findings, officers had carried out multi-disciplinary workshops with young people, parents, trading standards and lots of stakeholder groups. There were different messages for prevention, those young people who had tried vaping but were not regular users, and those who regularly used vapes. A range of recommendations, ideas and interventions had been established, to address the outcomes for each individual group.

The next step of the work was to create small working groups to assess audiences in more detail, and to create co-produced messaging on vapes with the young health champions. Prevention work was being done with Year 6s and their parents.

Trading Standards work continued alongside Public Health to continue test purchases and increase educational awareness on vapes. While the legislation to ban disposable vapes was welcome, there were concerns that young people may access illegal vapes or other means which were not regulated.

The funding from the Department for Health and Social Care would be used to support older young people who wanted to quit vaping, targeting key areas and groups where vaping and smoking was more prevalent. This work would sit alongside intervention work in schools.

Board members commented that while the number of vape users in younger age groups was low, the rate of increase was concerning as no one under the age of 18 should be using vapes. While vapes had been intended as a tool to stop smoking, they could become a gateway for other substance use.

The Board thanked Louise for her presentation and her work.

Board members supported all the recommendations.