More collaboration between health services and sport & physical activity industry
By Patrick Appleton
Barriers to physical activity must be broken down to help more people enjoy the wide range of activities on offer for the whole of the UK.
That was the view from the ‘The NHS and the fitness and leisure sector: what do we need from each other?’ panel at Active Uprising, ukactive’s flagship event, held at the QEII Exhibition Centre in Westminster, London.
Chairing the panel was Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sport. Leadbeater is no stranger to the sector, having worked in the fitness industry as a personal trainer and group exercise instructor before entering politics.
Speakers included Charlotte Osborn-Forde, CEO, National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP); Ben Beevers, group development director, Everyone Active; and Dr Davina Deniszczyc, charity director, medical director, responsible officer, Nuffield Health.
Also speaking on the panel were Emmerline Irving, head of improving population health, West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, and George MacGinnis, healthy ageing challenge director at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
Osborn-Forde bemoaned the fact that the NHS “is in crisis” with 11.2m patient interactions every week, and the medical model is “predominantly of a pharmaceutical approach”.
As for barriers to physical activity, the NASP CEO said NHS practice and policy “needs to change” and established professionals must be able to “embed social prescribing” in their Continued Professional Development (CPD).
“Within every secondary care pathway, there should be the opportunity to talk to somebody about what matters to them, what they enjoy and be connected to local community assets, groups and provision,” Osborn-Forde said.
Her thoughts chimed with Beevers’ view that, although Everyone Active has millions of visits across the country, only 20,000 of them are referrals. “A drop in the ocean,” in his view.
“I’ve got a personal view on this, as in 2014 I was diagnosed with stage four cancer, going through a brutal treatment of chemotherapy and stem cell transplant, which at times left me struggling to be able to even walk,” he said. “Throughout that journey, activity was actually a really massive part of getting through it – and then the 12 months of recovery from it.”
Beevers went on to talk about his bugbear that the industry can do all it wants, but the problem is “ease of access” to the services: “At the moment we’ve got this pathway to doing something quite prescribed and quite specific. I think the opportunity for us to break down that barrier is how do we open it up so it’s easier for people to self-prescribe and have the ability to actually get active and understand the benefit and impact of that much earlier.”
Deniszczyc laid out the facts for those in attendance, that one in four live with a long-term condition in the UK, while on that latest GP survey, 80% of people with a long-term condition felt that current services were inadequate for their needs.
She said that there was “irrefutable evidence” of physical activity as a treatment and is as effective as pills for many different conditions.
The panel agreed that collaboration is a key aspect of the move towards a healthier nation and all spoke of the need to simplify offerings, get leisure centres putting on walking clubs and affecting change for people in their community.
There was also a case for real funding and investment, mentioned by Deniszczyc. “If you get back to basics, what we need is funding – we need a good business case and therefore [the industry needs] a good return on investment,” she said. “If you look at the success of an intervention, ask ‘do the patients like it’ and ‘will it work as it said’, that ticks the box on GPs and referrals.”
Parity of esteem between intervention and prevention was also a hot topic on the panel. Irving told the audience that there is no resource in the NHS for now, but there will be growth, “so let’s reinvest those savings” and increase collaboration throughout the sector.
“There can be things done in the industry, but really I want to see us starting to do something in our communities, out of our hospitals and GP practices – we need shared outcomes, not targets,” Irving said. “We want people thriving, not just surviving and then how we pool that resource to do something different.”
MacGinnis agreed wholeheartedly with Irving’s sentiments and talked about the industry and those who operate in it “finding the win-win”, where opportunities are joined up and operators and individuals can ‘kill two birds with one stone’.
Talking about UKRI projects in the sport and physical activity industry, MacGinnis said that in the five years since his arrival into the role, 240 different projects have been funded.
He mentioned three themes that are key to all the projects: doing health checks differently with those who don’t have an employee wellbeing scheme, upskilling staff and the enjoyment of the experience.
“Unless the data you collect shows that you’re hitting the people that the health service wants you to [it’s quite meaningless],” MacGinnis said.
“To have that conversation with the health system, you need to have the right information to go with it – it’s that win-win you need to be looking for.”
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