52 weeks in public health research – the (very) rough guide

Guest post by Avril Rhodes

Remember the natty idea to take photographs representing a year of working in public health research? Well, how about a quick analysis of what we saw, snapped and submitted? Here are the exciting and indeed revealing results.

After looking at 198, or was it 200, images a portrait of researchers concerns emerges – not exactly Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, so much as the Rhodes' hierarchy of academic obsessions.

Bottom or is it top of the pile comes food. It’s official – no less than 42 pictures, close up and distance shots, ranging from individual snacks, drinks and meals to full size conference spreads and displays. I felt slightly queasy after looking at them all. Feed those academics!

The next most important thing is to feed the mind. Any passing course, lecture, symposium and the like weighing in with 20 pictures. But there’s lots more that get close to the mind-feeding category although making more cameo-esque appearances, such as degree ceremonies, IT, stands and posters, books, theses, work in progress and journal covers. Publication definitely counts. Completing work even more.

The office – no not the TV series, comes next, with 16 images, inflated perhaps with opportunities created by moving office and the delights of standing desks and desks tied to exercise apparatus. I would not have dreamed that taking a picture of the immediate work environment was so important. 

Travel ranks highly but possible to count in different ways. Railway stations are significant at 11 pictures, especially Newcastle Central – of world significance as stations go, but that’s just me. Car travel featured just slightly with a nod to cycling. Active travel (good and bad) is clearly a source both of delight, when stairs get favoured, and frustration, when lifts are promoted. Exercise equipment got a decent look in too. 

Signs and marketing really played on the collective academic mind. Labelling, the impact of shop placements and advertising, spelling mistakes, unintended humour, public health messaging, came in with around 12 images. Some of this felt a bit judgemental, when it came to cheap unhealthy food signs. Not too many wider determinants of health, it has to be said.

 

Field work related images scored a fairly respectable 9.

 

Culture kept creeping in. Museum visits, architecture, music, sculpture were all there. Nature played a relatively small part, but researchers did appreciate the cute, the beautiful, office plants and the changing seasons.

 

Then a whole rag bag of one-offs. Some were clearly novelty items or personal reminiscences, and some seemed like stream of consciousness, or pet concerns.

Curiously, the academic world was quite short of pictures of people, except in crowd shots doing serious lecture type stuff. It looked a camera shy world. So what do we have? A hard working, semi-office bound, nomadic community that likes writing, learning, unable to switch off form public health even when undertaking a leisure activity or just walking around the town, that enjoys high art and longs to sniff a flower. Is this what we are? The camera apparently doesn’t lie.

Public Health Post-election: What is its future?

Posted by David J Hunter, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Durham University and Fuse Deputy Director

The Conservatives’ election victory has brought both old and new faces into the ministerial team at the Department of Health. Jane Ellison returns as a junior minister and will retain the public health brief thereby bringing a degree of continuity to the post. She was growing into the post in the run-up to the election and public health insiders speak well of her.

Public Health Minister Jane Ellison

The fact there has been extensive coverage of the other ministerial appointments in health excluding hers might say a great deal not only about the place of public health in the government’s health priorities but about the level of importance the media attaches to the subject.

Clearly the funding difficulties plaguing the NHS will be uppermost in Jeremy Hunt’s (back as Secretary of State for Health) in-tray with the integrated health and social care agenda not far behind. But the new government is also committed to implementing the Five Year Forward View (5YFV) produced by the NHS Chief Executive, Simon Stevens, last October. Herein lies the hope for public health and surely the near certainty that it will occupy a high place on the government’s list of priorities.

Public health did not feature prominently in the Conservative Party’s manifesto and no major new initiatives were promised. None of the parties had much to say about public health during the campaign. And yet the new government is going to come under significant pressure to up its game over the next five years with the call for ‘a radical upgrade in prevention and public health’ featuring prominently in the 5YFV.

Not only that, but Simon Stevens rarely misses an opportunity in public to stress the importance of public health, admonishing successive governments for their failure to implement the Wanless ‘fully engaged scenario’.  Since the NHS failed to heed the warning, it ‘is on the hook for the consequences’. Wanless wanted a transformed NHS that put health and not illness first.

The 5YFV urges the NHS to redeem itself over the wasted years by becoming an advocate for ‘hard hitting action’ on avoidable lifestyle-related illnesses. Because these put added pressure on health care services, tackling them at source has to be a high priority if a universal service free to all at the point of use is to be sustained.

The latest projections from WHO published a week ago show that Europe faces an obesity crisis by 2030 and that urgent action is needed by governments. In the UK, 33% of women are forecast to be obese by 2030 compared with 26% in 2010. For men, the figures are 36% and 26% respectively. The figures are worse in some other WHO member states with only The Netherlands doing better and remaining stable.

As we know, although there is no silver bullet for tackling obesity restricting unhealthy food marketing is regarded as a key policy lever available to governments. Where this leaves the government’s responsibility deal approach to addressing key public health challenges is uncertain. Even if its critics are persuaded that it is working, the key question in the light of the WHO projections is whether it is working fast enough given the urgency of the crisis looming in under 15 years’ time.

Another key development concerns devolution within England and the Northern Powerhouse initiative. Local MP for Stockton South, James Wharton, has been made the first minister for the project. It builds on the DevoManc announcement earlier this year which put local government in charge of the NHS budget for the Greater Manchester region. Chancellor George Osborne, the architect of this experiment, in his first speech since the election will announce today similar devolved arrangements for the City regions, including Newcastle.

The move to devolve power and responsibility could have major implications for public health as local government will be able to pool budgets and adopt place-shaping policies to improve health and wellbeing and tackle the social determinants of health.

But the catch must be that these developments are occurring at a time when local government is on its knees. With no let up to austerity in sight and with further public spending cuts to come which will fall heavily on local government, the question has to be asked: is local government being set up to fail? Whatever the outcome, there will be significant implications for public health which cannot be predicted. Watch this space.

How active are pregnant women? Measuring the methods

Posted by Louise Hayes and Cath McParlin 

Louise and Cath are presenting on the subject of physical activity in pregnancy at the Fuse Phyical Activity Workshop tomorrow (15 May) at Sunderland University.

So we all know we should move a bit more to be more healthy and reduce our risk of getting diseases like diabetes. For a long time pregnancy was seen as a time when a woman could put her feet up, take it easy and ‘eat for two’. But not any longer! Guidance published over the last few years recommends no ‘pregnant pause’, but rather that pregnant women should aim to achieve at least 30 minutes of activity of at least moderate intensity activity on most days of the week - just like the rest of us.

Part of the justification for this is that physical activity might help to reduce the risk of gestational diabetes (GDM) – that’s a type of diabetes that is diagnosed in pregnancy and (usually) resolves after the pregnancy. However, to some extent, the jury’s still out on whether or not being active when you’re pregnant really does reduce GDM.

Partly this is because we don’t really know how to measure physical activity accurately in pregnant women. The more precisely we can measure physical activity, the more accurately we can establish the relationship between it and GDM and other health outcomes.

Physical activity measurement is fraught with difficulty in any circumstances – it’s a challenge to measure such a complex and multi-faceted behaviour. Pregnancy brings additional challenges. With the development (and increasing affordability) of numerous objective methods for measuring physical activity – pedometers, heart rate monitors, accelerometers - objective measurement of physical activity in epidemiology is increasingly common. For pregnant women, however, the validity and acceptability of these methods remains unclear.

We have agonised over how best to measure physical activity in a pregnant population. What effect does the increasing size of the ‘bump’ have on the validity of waist-worn monitors? How good are monitors at recording low-level activity, common in pregnant women? What are appropriate cut-offs for different activity intensities in pregnant women?

The choice of measurement method has a huge influence on conclusions we draw about how active women are during pregnancy. We have compared questionnaire methods and accelerometry using different criteria to define activity intensity and found that, depending on the method used, we identify anything from 12% to 65% of pregnant women to be meeting the current guideline (30 minutes of at least moderate activity per day) in the first half of pregnancy.

We’re looking forward to discussing the whys and wherefores of different methods of assessing physical activity with the experts attending the Fuse PA Group Workshop at Sunderland University tomorrow (Friday 15 May).

Party manifestoes, part 2: A war on junk food?

Guest post by Avril Rhodes

The Fuse blog has seen pieces on the marketing of junk food near supermarket checkouts in recent weeks. Interestingly, whilst all the political Parties profess many policies related to children and young people, this is a specific topic where they are silent. Perhaps it’s too micro an issue or maybe involves dealing with too many big business interests. Who knows? However, I wouldn’t wish to be called cynical and neither would our potential political masters, who are working hard on the junk food agenda…to varying degrees.

Conservatives will:

• Act to reduce childhood obesity (how?) 
• Continue to promote clear food information (not all that clear an aim, on reflection) 
• Introduce a national evidence based diabetes prevention programme (sounds interesting) 
• Invest more in primary care to prevent health problems (needs more detail)

Labour will:

• Set a new national ambition to improve the uptake of physical activity (and this means…?) 
• Set maximum permitted levels of sugar, salt and fat in foods marketed substantially to children (assuming we know what these foods are, and can get over the qualifier “substantially” without disappearing in a legislative quagmire, this, could, in the end improve the offer at the proverbial check out)

Liberal Democrats will:

• Restrict marketing of junk food to children, including restricting advertising before 9.00pm, and maintain the ‘5 A DAY’ policy (more specific, but perhaps would have the unintended consequence of driving the advertising onto the internet, and what about the argument that the 9.00pm watershed is an anachronism in light of current TV viewing technology?)
• Encourage traffic light labelling of food and publication of information on calorie, fat, sugar and salt content in restaurants and takeaways (and would this be better than dealing with the check-out offer? Or are people going out already committed to a more unhealthy option in the interests of convenience?)

Greens will:

• Extend VAT at the standard rate to less healthy foods, including sugar, and spend the money raised on subsidising a third of the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables. This, it is stated, could prevent 5,000 premature deaths a year. (A bold one this. Could the money raised be tracked to ensure this happened? What about ensuring the quality of the subsidised produce? Who provided the calculations on lives saved?)

Before you despair and think that there are more questions than answers, there is some good news here. All the parties (well except perhaps UKIP, who don’t discuss junk food, though are loud on backing British farming and fishing) have got the message that action needs to be taken about what our food contains. This should encourage the world of public health research. 

All views expressed are exclusively those of the author.

Party manifestoes, part 1: Four lessons to untangle the public health policies

Guest post by Avril Rhodes

Hung over by the election talk? Worn down by the TV debates? Well how about reading the manifestoes? Be honest with yourself, when did you last read a manifesto? The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto is 158 pages, but the remaining largest national parties (Conservative, Labour, Green and UKIP) make do with around 70 to 80ish pages. And the public health policies are all over the place, under welfare, housing, transport, the environment, education, the economy and, occasionally, under health – so need some real work to find. However, that’s good, even if the party seems untroubled by, or hasn’t heard of, the wider determinants of health, at least they’re there…or somewhere. So, first lesson, be prepared to find a public health policy just about anywhere. 

Second lesson, be ready to make comparisons and choose your topic. Take the broad sweep and you will find the whole thing indigestible, and it may turn you into a floating voter after you’ve agreed and disagreed in about equal measure with all you’ve read.

So, here’s one of the easier examples: booze and fags.

• Conservatives will end open display of tobacco in shops, introduce plain packaging and support people “struggling with addictions”. The latter is swept up in a review in how best to treat long term yet treatable conditions, which include alcohol addictions. 
• Labour come in with a levy on tobacco firms to pay for NHS staff and they will target high strength, low cost alcohol products, their argument being that this fuels problem drinking. 
• The Liberal Democrats want to reduce smoking rates, complete the introduction of plain packaging and also make a tax levy on tobacco companies, in their case to contribute to the costs of health care and smoking cessation services. They will also monitor evidence on e-cigarettes and “ensure restrictions on marketing and use are proportionate and evidence based”. Finally they will introduce a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol. 
• The Greens will increase alcohol and tobacco taxes to help fund NHS spending increases and set a MUP of 50p. In a big section on road safety they will reduce the alcohol limit for drivers “to as close to zero as possible”. 
• UKIP under their “Save the Pub” campaign will provide tax breaks for micro-breweries, amend the smoking ban to give pubs the chance to open smoking rooms, “properly ventilated and separated”, oppose minimum unit pricing and reverse the plain packaging rules. All of this, which you will have guessed, is in a chapter on “Heritage and Tourism”.

Third lesson, consider what’s not been said. Reading between the lines I think it’s probable, for example that Labour and the Greens would favour plain packaging, the Liberal Democrats might consider 50p for their MUP, and Labour might be amenable to, say, reducing the blood alcohol limits. But we can’t be sure.

Fourth lesson, if you’re going to have a debate with your friends about what’s on offer, anticipate the arguments they might offer, like, for example, that good local pubs, will combat loneliness, provide employment, and maintain community cohesion. Does that end justify the means? Or is UKIP’s claim that 6,000 pubs closed due to the smoking ban and ending the alcohol duty escalator worth bringing in the smokers from the cold?

All views expressed are exclusively those of the author. 

A blether with Scotland’s fast food vendors

Guest post by Michelle Estrade, Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP)

In June 2014 the Scottish Government published a voluntary framework, entitled Supporting Healthy Choices, which encourages the food industry to take action towards offering healthier food choices to consumers. The recommendations include guidance on promotional activities, healthier cooking practices, and types and portion sizes of foods offered. Just after the recommendations were drafted, I sat down with owners of independent fast food shops in lower-income neighbourhoods across Scotland to discuss how they felt about offering healthier menu options. They shared many thoughts on tradition, customer demand, and the deprived neighbourhood context, suggesting that food vendors in disadvantaged areas would need additional incentives and assistance in order to implement healthy menu guidelines and ensure that their customers don’t miss out on the potential benefits.

The shop owners I talked to took pride in their menus, using words like “traditional” and “proper” to describe the foods they sold. Because they felt food was being prepared the proper way, there was a sense of reluctance to change cooking methods. One example was the use of traditional beef dripping for frying, rather than healthier oil alternatives. During our conversation, the food vendor I was interviewing looked at me quizzically and asked: “I mean, how can we say we’re traditional if we’re cooking in palm oil or rapeseed oil?”

Most places I visited had a well-developed sense of niche, which was a common reason for offering only certain types of foods and not others. When I asked about the possibility of adding other [healthier] options, a fish and chip shop manager gave me a cheeky smile and quipped: “…they’re not coming here because they want fruit.” Again and again, the food vendors I talked to explained that they needed to respond to customer demand in order to keep their clients; competition was described as “cut-throat”, and the fear of losing business was palpable.

Indeed, price was viewed as a major barrier to offering healthier options to current clientele. The owner of a sandwich shop shared a personal example of the dilemma: “I don’t allow my kids to have fizzy juice, so I dinnae really like having it. I’d like to buy fresh juice, but it’s so expensive, you wouldn’t make any money. With the price you would have to charge, they wouldnae want to buy it.” Another told me: “We’re barely making a profit just now. If we were anywhere else we’d be able to charge more, but in [this neighbourhood], most of our customers are on a limited budget...”

I went into this project assuming that the major problem I would uncover would be a lack of awareness and knowledge about healthy eating. All we would need to do is help food vendors realise how important it is to get people to make healthier food choices, and they would be eager to jump on board with guidelines like Supporting Healthy Choices. What I found though was a much more complex set of circumstances at play – a constant struggle to cope with economic pressures, intertwined with the enduring characteristics of the neighbourhoods in which these people did business. Reflection on this has helped me realise that perhaps what needed uncovering was my own lack of awareness about the pivotal role of environment and context. Too often, I think, researchers are eager to jump into intervention mode and change what is happening without first thoroughly understanding why it’s happening.

Michelle is presenting at the Fuse Quarterly Research Meeting - More than enough on our plates: tackling the takeaway food diet at source tomorrow (Thursday 30 April).

Whipping town planners into shape

Guest post by Michael Chang, Town & Country Planning Association

Obesity is climbing up the national and local government agenda, and following two previous seminal publications – the Foresight Report on reducing obesity in 2007 and the Marmot Review of health inequalities in 2010 – one of the many spotlights has now firmly fixed on town planners and the planning system.

So all eyes will be on town planners at the Fuse event – More than enough on our plates: tackling the takeaway food diet at source – on Thursday (30 April).

This blog will attempt to shed some light on what planning can, must, should and could do. Coming from a non-academic background and admittedly a town planner, I take a pragmatic but liberal view of the planning system. This is not surprising as I work for a charitable organisation which essentially championed good planning for healthy outcomes for people in the Victorian times through the building of two garden cities in Letchworth and Welwyn.

Planning is a legal mechanism tasked with a land use function and exists to ensure the sustainable use of a scarce resource that is the land and the natural environment. What we do is grounded in what planning law, dating back to the 1990s, allows us to do and what national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published in 2012 requires us to do. Why do I emphasise these dates? Simple. Laws change and policies evolve. Of all the planning laws and policies we have had, there has never been an explicit reference or requirement to consider access to fresh healthy food. That is, until 2014 with the online Planning Practice Guidance which the government hailed as a triumph in condensing thousands of guidance into an accessible and evolving online guidance, and which supports the NPPF. In addition to having a section on health and wellbeing, it states:

The range of issues that could be considered through the plan-making and decision-making processes, in respect of health and healthcare infrastructure, include how: opportunities for healthy lifestyles have been considered (e.g. planning for an environment that …promotes access to healthier food).

Healthier food is of course not defined but at least planners are now strongly encouraged to consider food in planning.

Laws and policy frameworks haven’t stopped some enlightened local planning authorities in doing what they think is right for their local areas to use current planning powers to improve access to healthy food or rather, to restrict the proliferation of unhealthy land uses. We know there are dozens of councils now pursuing planning policies to prevent burgeoning shops serving unhealthy foods, albeit meeting increasing resistance from the food industry and also from within different sections of the planning profession. Actions in planning also take time: five years between the publication of Foresight (2007) to the first Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) on takeaways in 2009 and the Greater London Authority’s takeaways toolkit in 2012. Also there are more than 350 local planning authorities across England, so we still have a long way to go.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) published the Planning Healthy Weight Environments resource in 2014 which highlighted the following considerations regarding food in planning:

• Development avoids overconcentration of hot-food takeaways (A5 class use for the sale of hot food for consumption off the premises) in existing town centres or high streets, and restricts their proximity to schools or other facilities for children and young people and families.
• Shops/markets that sell a diverse offer of food choices are easy to get to by walking, cycling or public transport.
• Leisure centres, workplaces, schools and hospitals with catering facilities have a healthier food offer for staff, students, and/or customers.
• Opportunities for supporting innovative approaches to healthy eating through temporary changes of use have been explored.
• Development maintains or enhances existing opportunities for food-growing, and prevents the loss of food-growing spaces.
• Opportunities are provided for households to own or have access to space to grow food – for example roof or communal gardens, or allotments.

So the key message of this blog is: there is actually no legal, or professional, basis that stops town planners from taking appropriate policy actions to promote healthier communities through the provision and access to fresh healthy food. Much of what is needed is a cultural change within the profession, more active support of colleagues in public health in the planning process, continuing advocacy by national organisations, and last but not least (especially where Fuse is concerned), translating valuable evidence from academia to a format planners can use.

Have we been had?

Guest post by Jean Adams, Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR)

Parents don’t like sweets at supermarket checkouts. The ‘guilt lane’, as it’s been called, seems designed to attract children in a place where they are a captive audience – you can’t just move away from the checkout when you have a trolley full of shopping that you need to pay for.

This consumer concern is what seems to have prompted many supermarkets to impose total, or partial, bans on checkout confectionary.

It was certainly a healthy dose of parental curiosity that prompted our recent study on food at checkouts in non-food stores. The lead author was in Primark with her pre-schoolers, noticed a LOT of sweets by the till, and started to wonder how pervasive a phenomenon this was.

We felt food at checkouts in non-food stores was a worthwhile thing to study for two reasons. Firstly, these are places where we assumed most people aren’t naturally thinking about food. Buying confectionary at a supermarket is, perhaps, appropriate. But at a clothes shop? Presumably most people don’t go into Primark to buy some energy-dense, nutrient-poor snacks. So any purchases they do make are unplanned and prompted entirely by the display, rather than, say, hunger. Secondly, a lot of campaigning attention has been devoted to #junkfreecheckouts in supermarkets. To some good effect. But if the problem has just shifted to other types of shops, then any war is not yet won.

So we enlisted the help of two medical students, who were keen to get some hands-on experience of public health research, and did a survey of all the non-food stores in the MetroCentre - which has the dubious accolade of being the second largest shopping centre in the UK (I’m sure it was the largest in Europe at some point).

Of 205 non-food stores in the MetroCentre, 32 of them, or 16%, had food within arm’s reach of the checkout queuing area. All these stores stocked less healthy checkout food, although about half of them also had foods that were not specifically identified as less healthy. This was mostly bottled water or chewing gum – so not exactly healthful! Overall more than four-fifths of checkout food was less healthy and would not be allowed to be advertised on children’s TV in the UK.

As well as making life easier for the parents of young children, there may well be health benefits of #junkfreecheckouts. Around the world, most checkout food really is ‘junk’ – soft drinks, and foods high in energy and salt, and low in vitamins and minerals. Checkout food may prompt impulse purchases and purchasing requests from children, which parents find hard to resist.

But, importantly, I’m not aware of any research that shows that people who see more checkout junk food eat more junk food, or that removing checkout junk food leads to changes in what people buy or eat. This is one of those absence of evidence, rather than evidence of absence situations – we just don’t know what effect checkout confectionary has on what kids eat.

There was an interesting discussion on the Food Programme recently suggesting that sales of confectionary from UK supermarkets were steady, or rising, despite many stores removing it from checkouts. Checkouts aren’t the only way to prompt impulse purchases in supermarkets. Prominent, end-aisle displays, and price promotions seem to be keeping sweets sales buoyant. At least for now.

This wasn’t what we meant: a prominent confectionary display opposite a #junkfreecheckout at my local supermarket (that pizza wasn’t mine!)

Which makes me wonder…have we been had? Have supermarkets taken confectionary off tills because it makes them look responsible and ‘part of the solution’, knowing full well it will have no effect on sales? And what might the consequences of that be for public health? Well, no change on the diet front. But what if supermarkets voluntarily choosing to remove checkout junk food, means that it also closes down a conversation on unhealthy food environments? Could the supermarkets keep referring to this non-change as a way of trumpeting how importantly they take health, and silencing any requests for further, serious, meaningful change?

I find this a bit scary. Some well-intentioned public health campaigning might have made things worse? I don’t know that it has. Maybe it hasn’t. Probably it hasn’t? Hopefully it hasn’t. Probably it’s just made no difference. At the very least, it makes life a bit easier for stressed out parents trying to get the shopping done and their kids to eat a healthy diet?

How hard can it be? Flying over the gap between research and policy

Posted by Peter van der Graaf

A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He came lower and shouted: “Excuse me, can you help? I promised a friend I would meet him, but I don’t know where I am”. The woman below replied: “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude”.

“You must be a researcher,” said the balloonist. “I am,” replied the woman, “how did you know?” "Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded: “You must be a policy maker”. “I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?” “Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

This story was presented by Professor Roland Bal from Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands in his recent Knowledge Exchange Seminar titled: ‘Hybrid management in science-policy practice relations’. You might have heard the story before, as it is adapted from an article by Locock & Boaz in 2004 in Social Policy and Society and also quoted in the PhD thesis of one his students, Rik Wehrens (2013), who studied the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres for Public Health and how they shaped the co-production of research, policy and practice within this field in the low lands.

 

In his seminar Roland used the above story to explain that we often fall into the trap of thinking of two communities (ivory tower scientists on the one hand and policy makers at the coalface on the other) with completely different perspectives on the use of research and evidence. He did not deny there were differences between both professions, and gaps to bridge but suggested that we should use these gaps more strategically. By starting from a recognition that all science is a social practice quoting Jasanoff (2004) (“Scientific knowledge [..] both embeds and is embedded in social practices, identities, norms, conventions, discourses, instruments and institutions” (p. 2-3)) he showed how the Dutch Centres have been able to blur the boundaries between the two communities by distinguishing between a front and back stage for their partnerships and performing on these stages at different times in the collaboration process.

At front stage the academics took the limelight and made all the right noises about scientific rigour by presenting their advisory report to public and policy audiences, complete with imposing lecture theatres. They deliberately emphasised the difference between academics and health professionals to create the impression of ‘science speaking truth to power’. However, the content of the reports and the research behind were intensely debated behind the scenes on various back stages between academics, health professionals and policy makers to ensure that the research objectives and findings were embedded in the wider political context. In other words, collaboration and distinction were highlighted at different times in the process to enable each community to explain and sell their work to their peers: policy makers needed to account for their compromises and shared decisions, and academics needed to manage the expectation around their research.

Two key mechanisms provided crucial in this staging: firstly, dual appointments that enabled health practitioners to take up part-time roles in academia (but surprisingly not the other way round!) and, secondly, scenario approaches that clustered specific interventions into modelled scenarios connected to relevant policy programmes.

What lessons does this hold for Fuse? Are we still trying to bridge the two communities or should we spend more time developing different stages? AskFuse (our responsive research and evaluation service) might be a step in the right direction to create the back stage for initial conversations between policy makers, health professionals and academics but where is our front stage? Are we making enough noise? And how serious are we about dual appointments (researchers in residence?) and linking research on interventions to specific policy programmes?

Hunting down the seasonal calories: an Easter eggs-ercise

Posted by Avril Rhodes

Will you be looking forward to an Easter egg hunt soon? Well, beware, those Easter treats are really loaded with calories, fat, and bizarrely, a little fibre. I’d love to say I’ve spent hours researching this, but I haven’t - just one trip to this weight loss website and I was overwhelmed with results. So, I picked a few favourites.

No Easter eggs were harmed in the writing of this blog (although some may have been consumed)

 Let’s go for some at the top end, weighing in at 1,250.2 calories, 67.7g fat and 4.0g fibre was the Kit Kat Chunky Easter egg from Nestle. Chunky indeed. Another in the heavyweight division for possibly more sophisticated palates, is the After 8 Giant (clue here) Chocolate egg also from Nestle which has 1,072 calories, per shell (possibly the calorie measuring people couldn’t bring themselves to estimate the whole egg). It has 64.6g fat and 16g fibre, which is a consolation but not as good as, say, porridge. How about the dark chocolate Easter egg from Green & Black’s, sneaking in at under 1,000 calories with 960, but 69.5g fat (ouch!) and strangely, 16.6g fibre? I know that Garfield, the cartoon cat, once said he’s never met a calorie he didn’t like, but there are limits to how you might increase your fibre intake. However, with Green & Black’s you are buying Fairtrade chocolate, which can’t be bad, and this also applies to Divine Chocolate.

Ding-ding! Round one goes to this heavyweight contender

And what about the children I hear you cry. The Buttons Easter egg by Cadburys is 858.6 calories per medium egg, (who said medium?) with 48.6g fat and 1.1g fibre. The Cadbury Caramel egg, per 38g egg (so a snack really), is 195 calories; with a mere 10.2g fat and 0.2g fibre. Parents might be tempted by the pack of two (to keep each other company, presumably) Cadbury Caramel bunnies, which come in at 200 calories, 10.8g fat and 0.2g fibre. And I couldn’t write this blog without paying homage to the Cadbury’s Crème egg which is 180 calories per egg with a fat rating of 6.3g. Although, I have overheard gossip about the Crème egg being downsized, bearing in mind that you seem to be able to buy these from December 26th onwards.

And what about the office snacking? More bad news. A single Lindt chocolate mini-egg, a mere 5g, is 30calories, a Malteaster bunny (ahhh) by Maltesers is 157 calories; and each Cadbury’s mini egg is 16 calories.

However, you can earn your calories. The same website that calorie counted the eggs, makes some suggestions that seem blatantly sexist…for example a 40 year old female weighing 12st 7lb who is moderately sedentary, can use 100 calories spending 30 minutes hovering/dusting/mopping floors, or, if you prefer, 20 minutes weeding the garden. What a way to earn about half of a Crème egg! I have no idea what you do with the other half.

Well, have a Happy Easter anyway from all at Fuse. That's all yolks!

The 'C' Word VII: Caring (for carers)

Posted by Jenni Remnant

Last month I attended ‘Caring for carers: developing good practice for carers in Newcastle’. Over 130 people were in attendance -  a mixed bag of commissioners, health and social care providers, third sector and voluntary organisations, and student representatives from both Newcastle and Northumbria University. 

The day began with acknowledging the scale of the ‘problem’. Guy Pilkington, Clinical Chair of NHS Newcastle West Clinical Commissioning Group described the issue as ‘under recognised, under supported, and under resourced’ in his opening talk. 

We went on to learn from Ewen Weir, director of wellbeing, care and learning at Newcastle City Council, that a recent study from Leeds estimated the national value of the free labour of informal carers per year is £119 billion. He asked us to imagine if informal carers around the country went on strike, and suggested to us that if informal care ceased, the system - which is already ‘creaking’ - would fail.

Throughout his talk Ewen drew on his own experiences of caring, and described sometimes emotionally, how despite his expertise, he struggled to navigate the system when attempting to access care for a family member. He told the audience that the issue of informal care is ‘ignored at our peril’ and explained that it is expected that by 2017 we’ll reach a tipping point, where demand will outweigh supply.

Atendees were introduced to the numbers in Newcastle according to the 2011 census. We were informed that of our population (279,100), 27,644 reported that they provide unpaid care: 6822 of these for upwards of fifty hours per week. As might be expected the emotional wellbeing and mental health of carers was considered a public health concern, and in the group work the physical dangers of some carers’ situations were highlighted as risky.

‘Open Clasp’, a local theatre company, gave us a further reality check. In two brief scenes they portrayed the story of a carer who ends up putting her mother into a care home. Two actresses showed with painful clarity the difficulties faced by unpaid informal carers and paid care assistants. It was difficult to watch and - judging from my experiences, and the experiences of people close to me of both caring roles - totally accurate.  

Your Person Centred Plan

We discussed throughout the day the introduction of the Care Act (2014), that is said to be ‘built around the carer’, provide more clarity and put carers on an ‘equal footing’ with the ‘cared for’. A diagram was used to illustrate this, which for those who know, looks very similar to illustrations of person-centred planning (see diagram above). This is where the person in receipt of service provision is placed in the middle and a plan of support is created to surround them. It was interesting in this respect to visualise this model, whereby someone with a person centred plan might be being cared for by someone else with a similar service plan. Could all this ‘planning’ actually get in the way of the caring?

Another interesting feature was the lack of discussion about the ‘cared for’. I have been inclined to argue (evidenced in past blogs) that while disabled, ill and older people are chronically undervalued by society, it doesn’t seem beyond the realms of imagination that the people that care for them might be undervalued. That said though, feedback was given to us that the top three issues for carers, as identified by carers, were: their mental health and wellbeing, their emotional health, being able to have a break, and accessing information.

I looked forward to when the audience had the opportunity to put questions to a panel which included commissioning representatives, a carer’s champion GP, Council representatives and Katie Dodd, the Chief Executive of Newcastle Carers. The questions were kind and focused on shared/combined budgets between clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authorities and information sharing, in essence, the nitty gritty application of rhetoric to reality. Although, following these questions, all parties seemed to work on the assumption that the energy in the room would be maintained and turned into action. The inappropriate care responsibilities placed on young carers was a hot topic throughout the day, and one attendee asked: ‘what is an appropriate caring responsibility for a young person?’ to which the answer was that being a carer is always an inappropriate role for a young person. The time they spend caring should be the time for their education, learning and growing. Something we could all agree on.

The day held some ideological issues for me. I struggled with discussion of carers, without the voice of the ‘cared for’ (although I find this descriptor in itself uncomfortable). We also very infrequently visited societal and systemic issues beyond just care, such as the undervaluing of the ‘cared for’ that I mentioned above, as well as issues around class and gender.

The day scared me, despite my previous experiences and reading around the subject, I had not understood the pressing public health concern that the care of carers represents. I am genuinely terrified by the implications of this. People are devastated by the strains of informal caring and a seemingly impossible system - it can be agony - and this is before demand outstrips supply.

The day motivated me, the use of the theatre company was inspired, and their agreement to be involved suggested a world of potential in terms of research and participant engagement and knowledge exchange.

There’s not much conclusion to this other than to acknowledge that a health crisis looms, in a context of cuts, closing third sector and voluntary organisations, and shrinking resources. Research will have a role, and probably more than ever we will have to think intuitively to keep up with developments. Certainly the practical application of the Care Act from April 1^st and its impact will be one to watch.

A new cocktail – the McGonigles – gin and public health anyone?

Posted by Avril Rhodes

I went to Stockton High Street last Saturday (bear with me, this gets more exciting) and a vision opened before my eyes. A new business has opened (only to be applauded in the High Street which has been struggling for years despite the Herculean efforts of the Council) which is called Dr M’Gonigle’s Emporium. Now, Dr M’Gonigle (or more commonly McGonigle depending on where you look) is becoming an increasingly well- known Medical Officer of Health of Stockton, during the inter-war years, who tirelessly championed population health for local people, especially those who were feeling the effects of low income in general. He made compelling links between poverty and ill health. Despite this his name has been used for the branding of a pub – yes, a pub! Am I the only one who sees this as incongruous?

What Pub? Website, which operates for CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) proudly declares…..

“About the Pub

Opened Dec 2014 and named after Dr George Cuthbert Mura M'Gonigle who fought hard to maintain the health of the poor people of Stockton. A pleasant open plan bar offering big screen TV and serving up to four real ales and a cider.”

The external décor made it absolutely clear that customers and passers-by alike were to see a link between the naming of the pub and the image of the great man himself, adapting an image of the good doctor that is frequently used in tributes to his work, see picture left, as a motif.

When I next down four pints of real ale and a cider, I shall of course be thinking about my health and my disposable income to enable me to cruise along the bar taps instead of settling down to a plate of healthy food.

This new development is sad to the point of being tear-jerking. Stockton High Street is at the end of a major refurbishment, one of many over the years to try and breathe new life into what was once a proud shopping centre of choice and indeed, branded the widest High Street in the UK. The latest work is impressive, but still can’t disguise that there are far too many voids, leaving too few shops attracting too few customers. I hope I’m proved wrong and that the current refurbishment will have the desired effect. At a time when there is much debate about licensing and public health, and the effect on drinking patterns, how, on top of the controversy did this strange name slip through the Local Authority’s scrutiny?

This, dear audience, is like opening a tobacconists named after Sir Richard Doll, who discovered the link between smoking and (ill) health. It really is, but then Dr McGonigle smoked and died young, but at least this was before the work of Doll was completed and published. Amber Taverns who own the establishment cannot claim ignorance.