Healthy towns

Government Ministers have invested in a “healthy towns” scheme by pouring £30m into nine UK areas to improve the health of the public.

Tower Hamlets, a borough of London involved in the scheme, is one of the nine areas taking part. 

Obesity is prevalent in the London borough and has poor health compared to the rest of London and UK, according to the Tower Hamlets Local Area Agreement 2008-2011. It rates 349^th out of 408 authority districts for life expectancy in Britain.

One of the ideas about to be tried at the borough, is an awards scheme. Food businesses will be encouraged to sell healthier options to customers for which they will gain points to buy sportswear and equipment.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson said it is the way “to create a healthy England”.

Is government money the answer?

A Health Councillor and Deputy Manager at Tower Hamlet feels there is more to the health problems within the area than the government is aware of.

He told me: “You can’t come in as an outsider and impose something on a community you don’t know anything about.”

The councillor has worked for the Tower Hamlet council since 1993 and is familiar with the area’s cultural diversity. He thinks that the range of cultures means it is difficult to impose a one-rule fits all approach.

An example he gave of ethnic health diversities was that of the Bengali community. Generally they tended to suffer from mouth cancer because it is in their culture to chew tobacco.

And diets of the Chinese, Somali and Bangladeshi communities all vary. Therefore he said it would be unfair to impose what was healthy and what was not from someone of a white middle class background.

Other ways

Tower Hamlets has organised yearly Summer health fairs for the past 10 years, with 1500 people attending the last two day event last June.

They gave talks on smoking, healthy eating, diabetes and epilepsy with one to one sessions with trained staff. They had bicycle stand competitions and did cholesterol checks. They also introduced alternative therapies to residents such as homeopathy, massage and reflexology.

He said his ideal solution to improving public health is to have, “influential members of the community who is familiar with the neighbourhood and can help the public understand what health means.

“You’re not going to make health fashionable overnight.”

Time will tell whether the scheme improves community health. According to the BBC, Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said the schemes were:

 “Very sensible. In many ways this is too little, too late. The government should have acted years ago. However, you have to start somewhere and these are certainly the right kind of schemes."