Newsletter 15 - August 2007 — Oxford Health Alliance

OxHA news and highlights.

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Message from the executive director

OxHA has been busy during July, in spite of the rain in the UK! The director of our health and the environment workstream, Tony Capon, visited London and held a number of useful meetings.

We have also continued to develop 3FOUR50 – I encourage you to visit the site, and send us any ideas you have for news stories we could feature as part of the 3FOUR50 Video News.

The OxHA website is hosting the request for proposals of the $15 million Ovations initiative to counter chronic disease in developing countries (in which OxHA, with NIH, is a partner). The Ovations initiative is the Project Spotlight this month.

Stig Pramming

3FOUR50

3FOUR50 now includes a weekly video news update >> Please send us any ideas that you would like to see featured.

Stories covered this month include:

a vox pop on a ‘fat tax’ – 20 July >>
employee wellness promotion – 6 July >>
an interview with Richard Smith, executive director of Ovations, a new initiative to counter chronic disease in developing countries – 27 July >>

We are delighted that the 3FOUR50 News is being syndicated by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. If you would like it syndicated on your website, drop us a line.

Members of the 3FOUR50 Network can now ‘Invite someone into the network’ – this option appears on your profile page when you log in. If you aren’t currently signed up, it is easy to do – there is a very straightforward step-by-step guide here >>

Community Interventions for Health

The CIH evaluation team continues to develop the methodology for the study, including working with the investigators in each country to refine the adult and child surveys, and is planning to assemble an expert panel to review the instruments that have been developed. This panel will include leading researchers in tobacco prevention, diet/nutrition, and physical activity.

Summit 2008

Planning has begun for the next OxHA summit, which will be held in Sydney from 25–27 February 2008, on the theme of ‘Building a healthy future: chronic disease and our environment’. More information will be available soon, on the OxHA website and on 3FOUR50.

Designing the environment for health

Tony Capon, director of this OxHA workstream, visited London and Copenhagen during July.

Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment

OxHA met with Polly Turton, senior public affairs advisor (with a particular focus on health) at CABE, to discuss the work of our organisations with the hope of collaborating in future in the UK and internationally.

Arup

OxHA had two meetings with Arup during Tony’s time in London, focusing particularly on linking with Arup in Australia in the run-up to the OxHA summit in February 2008, and also on Arup’s sustainability projects in developing countries.

Copenhagen meetings

While in Copenhagen, Tony held discussions with WHO Healthy Cities and Monday Morning, and Danish think-tank.

Seminar on Healthy and Sustainable Communities

A seminar on Healthy and Sustainable Communities >> was hosted at the Australian Health Policy Institute on 26 July. The keynote speaker was A/Prof. Susan Thompson, an expert in healthy urban planning, from The University of New South Wales. Other contributors were Arup, NSW Health Department and the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Sydney.

Global Cities exhibition

OxHA staff in London visited an exhibition at the Tate Modern art gallery on Global Cities >>, which includes striking statistics and imagery around 10 cities, focusing on size, speed, form, density and diversity. However, there was little mention of ‘health’ as an important aspect of city design.

Youth

MEND in Denmark

Partner municipality Frederiksvaerk-Hundested Kommune has received a grant of DDK 3.2 million (approximately £290,000) from the Danish state to realise a project for community health and prevention of lifestyle disease among children, in partnership with OxHA and UK-based MEND. The three-year project consists of a general preventive effort towards all young people in the municipality and a specific intervention using the MEND programme for overweight children and their families.

Fit City

Fit City will bring together photographs, drawings, videos, sounds, songs, etc., which best show the innovative ways in which young people are shaping their world. In September, an international call will be sent out for entries to the competition (five of the best entries will win places at the Sydney summit).
The finished piece, to be presented by the winners of the competition, will be a short video, incorporating as many of the photos, songs etc. as possible that have been collected. The winners will articulate their submissions and those of their fellow entrants, and provide a young and culturally diverse perspective for the summit deliberations. In offering up a forward-thinking, positive set of ideas, it is hoped the work will inspire optimistic thought and debate.

Workplace and industry

Meetings

A number of meetings have taken place around Workplace and Industry this month, including with Dame Carol Black (the UK’s national director for health and work), BUPA, Business in the Community, the Corporate Citizenship Company, Humana, Ogilvy and RAND Europe. An exploratory meeting was also held with WSP, a building and environmental consultancy employing 2,000 staff in the UK and 8,000 worldwide. The meeting was called by the heads of Health and Safety, HR and Environmental, and a follow-up seminar on workplace health has been proposed.

Food industry workshop

In partnership with Bruno Christensen, CEO of Retail Institute Scandinavia, OxHA hosted a closed workshop for a handful of key food manufacturers and a supermarket chain regarding strategies for innovation around healthy foods, incentives around production and marketing opportunities.

Media and PR

A letter from Christine Hancock was published in the Financial Times, in response to an article ‘Gourmet canteens give workers food for thought’. The letter can be read here >>

Influence and networking

Global Health

Christine Hancock attended a meeting designed to assist in the production of a Global Health strategy for the UK government following a paper produced by the UK Departments of Health and International Development. The meeting was facilitated by Pam Garside and led by Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet.

ICHARM

OxHA met with Harald Lipman, who is leading a three-year programme in Russia to demonstrate the economic and health benefits of reducing heart disease and stroke.

Project spotlight: Ovations RFP to create centres to counter chronic disease in developing countries

One major barrier to countering chronic disease in the developing world at the moment is lack of capacity and leadership. There are too few leaders, individuals, and institutions adequately equipped to counter chronic disease. This situation has led Ovations, a US health and wellbeing company, to develop a programme to build such capacity.

The creation of centres has been a successful strategy for building capacity in areas such as infectious disease. Ovations plans to replicate this success in chronic disease, and has now put out a request for proposals. Institutions from any country may apply, and joint proposals that include institutions from the developed world and developing countries will be welcomed. Centres will be expected to train and develop individuals who will become leaders and be ready to capitalise on the large flow of funds that is likely soon to be available for countering chronic disease in the developing world.

Ovations is devoting $15 million in funds and kind over five years to the programme and wants not just to fund centres but also to work with them. Ovations plans to partner with other organisations and raise more funds. It has already partnered with OxHA and the National Institutes of Health.

OxHA is publishing any questions arising from the RFP process here >> and the project was highlighted on 3FOUR50 news on 27 July >>

The full RFP document can be found here >> Initial responses of not more than 2,000 words need to reach Susan Hunsanger at Ovations by 4 September.

Global headlines – the OxHA Alliance Alerts

11 Alerts have published this month, highlights of which include:

Disney films to phase out smoking >>

In its latest move to promote healthier lifestyles, Disney studios has announced it will phase out cigarette smoking from its films – the first Hollywood studio to do so. The company said it hoped other production studios would follow its lead, as research has shown that the presence of smoking in a movie significantly influences a child’s decision to start the habit.

Obesity concerns in Mauritania >>

In Mauritania, two in five women are overweight, and a 2001 government survey found that one in five women between the ages 15 and 49 had been deliberately overfed, as obesity is seen to be a sign of family wealth. The government is trying to change this view, using TV commercials and public-health announcements to warn about the dangers of being overweight – diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure.

If you would like to comment on an Alert, or if you identify a story that could be incorporated on our site as an Alliance Alert, please email info@oxha.org.

OxHA secretariat

We are delighted that Phyllis Ramage has begun work as the new part-time office manager at OxHA.

Upcoming dates

OxHA members are encouraged to email info@oxha.org with any important upcoming events that they would like highlighted here and on OxHA’s online calendar >>