Date of the event: Thursday 10th February 2011
Organised by: North West Health and Physical Activity Forum
Venue: The Westleigh Conference Centre, Preston
By: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer
This incredibly energise
d conference that covered everything to do with Physical Activity in the North West took place in the beautiful surroundings of Westleigh conference Centre, a beautiful 19th century mansion house, and Maggie and I were pleased to see our first snow drops of the year (pictured) sprinkling the lawn!
Unusually for a conference of this kind, all the key note speakers were both interesting and relevant:
Dr Ruth Hussey, the Regional Director of Public Health kicked off the day with Physical Activity and innovation – The Regional perspective, and drew our attention to Public Health England – A new service to get people healthy, from the Department of Health, and focused on innovation in the North West, such as the sports and physical activity challenge http://www.sportandphysicalactivity.nhs.uk/ for employees of NHS healthcare establishments.
Next, Dr Harry Rutter (@harryrutter), Director of the National Obesity Observatory, won us all over with his presentation Nudge, Budge and Fudge. Referring to Thaler and Sunstein’s well known book on behaviour change, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, he talked about the governments plan to advocate encouraging or 'nudging' people to make healthier decisions for themselves. With the help of some very complex (or is it complicated?) diagrams and mind maps he succinctly conveyed that it takes more than individual interventions (e.g. changing doughnuts for biscuits at meetings, cycling instead of taking public transport) to change people, when it’s so easy to slip (rewarding yourself with double helpings of dinner), and his belief that a whole new outlook, including infrastructure to make making healthy decisions easier, is what’s needed. He was so convincing I even dusted my bike off at the weekend!
The last speaker in the morning was Denise Hampson, a Health behaviour Economist and the Managing Director of Hampson Solutions, who took a very different approach with her presentation: Why public health should be more like the best theme park in the world, and less like your local bank. Denise’s presentation was based on her popular theories (at least at the last few NWHPAF events I’ve been too!) about behaviour change, where she explains decision making as a process using the “hot” (emotional, habitual) and “cold” (logical) parts of our brain, and went on to use the extended metaphors of the experience you get at a bank (boring investments – save now and you’ll get the benefit much later) to that of going to Disney World (immediate fun and pleasure) to demonstrate why people make the health decisions they do. Leaving us with the question, “What if Walt Disney was your boss?” she raised an important question about marketing the experience of health interventions (such as the fun of playing football and the feel good factor of yoga) rather than the long term benefit. It reminded me a lot of what marketers, selling everything from cars to concert tickets, do all the time.
Next came the parallel sessions (which sandwiched a great lunch). I attended a session led by Nick Cavill (@cavilln) on the Department of Health’s forthcoming new Physical Activity guidelines. Apparently they’re going to be very similar to Canada’s, released last month. The group raised several issues with the proposed change from 5 x 30, to 150 mins a week, and the general consensus in the group seemed to be that 150 minutes might be off putting, as it sounds so much, or that people may feel their long bike ride on a Sunday might be enough. On a more positive note it was suggested that there will be specific guidelines available for early years, children and older people for the first time. I also went to a fun and interesting session on how music can increase your performance while exercising, and I know Maggie loved being top of the scoreboard for the session on Street Soccer by Play Innovation (see the video to see how it works).
As I’m a bit of a Social Media advocate myself, I was also really pleased that the use of Twitter was encouraged throughout the day. You can look back on the conversation by using the #nwhpaf hashtag, with lots of input from @nwhpaf @harryrutter @cavilln @denisehampson @Playinnovation @Human_Kinetics and of course, @targetwellbeing
All in all it was a very worth while day and we were very grateful to the NWHPAF and Events Northern team for organising it!
Organised by: North West Health and Physical Activity Forum
Venue: The Westleigh Conference Centre, Preston
By: Rhiannon Davies, Communications Officer
This incredibly energise
d conference that covered everything to do with Physical Activity in the North West took place in the beautiful surroundings of Westleigh conference Centre, a beautiful 19th century mansion house, and Maggie and I were pleased to see our first snow drops of the year (pictured) sprinkling the lawn!Unusually for a conference of this kind, all the key note speakers were both interesting and relevant:
Dr Ruth Hussey, the Regional Director of Public Health kicked off the day with Physical Activity and innovation – The Regional perspective, and drew our attention to Public Health England – A new service to get people healthy, from the Department of Health, and focused on innovation in the North West, such as the sports and physical activity challenge http://www.sportandphysicalactivity.nhs.uk/ for employees of NHS healthcare establishments.
Next, Dr Harry Rutter (@harryrutter), Director of the National Obesity Observatory, won us all over with his presentation Nudge, Budge and Fudge. Referring to Thaler and Sunstein’s well known book on behaviour change, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, he talked about the governments plan to advocate encouraging or 'nudging' people to make healthier decisions for themselves. With the help of some very complex (or is it complicated?) diagrams and mind maps he succinctly conveyed that it takes more than individual interventions (e.g. changing doughnuts for biscuits at meetings, cycling instead of taking public transport) to change people, when it’s so easy to slip (rewarding yourself with double helpings of dinner), and his belief that a whole new outlook, including infrastructure to make making healthy decisions easier, is what’s needed. He was so convincing I even dusted my bike off at the weekend!
The last speaker in the morning was Denise Hampson, a Health behaviour Economist and the Managing Director of Hampson Solutions, who took a very different approach with her presentation: Why public health should be more like the best theme park in the world, and less like your local bank. Denise’s presentation was based on her popular theories (at least at the last few NWHPAF events I’ve been too!) about behaviour change, where she explains decision making as a process using the “hot” (emotional, habitual) and “cold” (logical) parts of our brain, and went on to use the extended metaphors of the experience you get at a bank (boring investments – save now and you’ll get the benefit much later) to that of going to Disney World (immediate fun and pleasure) to demonstrate why people make the health decisions they do. Leaving us with the question, “What if Walt Disney was your boss?” she raised an important question about marketing the experience of health interventions (such as the fun of playing football and the feel good factor of yoga) rather than the long term benefit. It reminded me a lot of what marketers, selling everything from cars to concert tickets, do all the time.
Next came the parallel sessions (which sandwiched a great lunch). I attended a session led by Nick Cavill (@cavilln) on the Department of Health’s forthcoming new Physical Activity guidelines. Apparently they’re going to be very similar to Canada’s, released last month. The group raised several issues with the proposed change from 5 x 30, to 150 mins a week, and the general consensus in the group seemed to be that 150 minutes might be off putting, as it sounds so much, or that people may feel their long bike ride on a Sunday might be enough. On a more positive note it was suggested that there will be specific guidelines available for early years, children and older people for the first time. I also went to a fun and interesting session on how music can increase your performance while exercising, and I know Maggie loved being top of the scoreboard for the session on Street Soccer by Play Innovation (see the video to see how it works).
As I’m a bit of a Social Media advocate myself, I was also really pleased that the use of Twitter was encouraged throughout the day. You can look back on the conversation by using the #nwhpaf hashtag, with lots of input from @nwhpaf @harryrutter @cavilln @denisehampson @Playinnovation @Human_Kinetics and of course, @targetwellbeing
All in all it was a very worth while day and we were very grateful to the NWHPAF and Events Northern team for organising it!
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