4th Annual Health and Wellbeing Conference 2012

 

Another very successful and inspiring conference took place at the Leeds Marriot Hotel on the 8^th March. A full complement of 200 delegates attended from health, social care, education, Leeds City Council, private, voluntary and faith organisations. The theme, “Healthy Lives for All – Our City” high-lighted how we all have a part to play in promoting and enabling healthy lifestyle choices and changes for the population of Leeds, and how much good work is already going on in Leeds.

The energy all day was electric. Delegates were treated to two inspirational key note speakers each experts in their field; Damian Edwards an expert on cognitive behavioural therapy and author/trainer of the Leeds Lets Change, Making Every Contact Count training programme, convinced us that our individual health promotion efforts may feel like a drop in ocean but that we are all in this ocean together and the number of people nudged to make healthier choices translates into a number of lives saved. Professor Mike Kelly, Director of the Centre of Public Health Excellence at National Institute for Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) complemented this with his own evidenced based support for embedding health promotion into everyone’s agenda and particularly those that have influence over our living environments. He offered a different take on ‘Nudge’, the influences that impact our automatic response system that require little or no cognitive engagement, but is driven by immediate feelings and triggered by our environments. Leeds Marriot Hotel gave us an excellent deal on their venue and more food than expected including an extravagant high tea which was ironic in that it followed Professor Mike Kelly’s presentation on the ‘Nudge’ strategy!

We benefited from having an excellent Chair; Councillor Yeadon whose astute and engaging style steered the proceedings of the day.

Dr Ian Cameron, Director of Public Health and Tom Riordan Chief Executive of Leeds City Council both spoke about how they are striving to make Leeds the best city for health and wellbeing and Lucy Jackson, a consultant in Public Health gave an overview of the health of the Leeds’ population and the inequalities therein.

A broad range of organisations were represented by a number of excellently rated workshops, market stalls and ten minute presentations, raising awareness of the good work going on to support healthier lifestyle choices in Leeds and how the delegates can engage with or sign-post to them.  During the lunch break some lucky delegates were treated to some simple yoga exercises. More people than could be accommodated put themselves forward for this.

Key outcomes for delegates included that it was an inspirational event, an opportunity for networking and finding out the breadth of activity to support healthier lifestyles in Leeds, and provided learning that can be applied in daily work roles.

Some quotes:

“I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation and thanks for such an informative, motivational and enjoyable event.   The facilitation of the Conference was excellent and since my return to my workplace, I have been preaching to the converted.”

 “Met some really interesting people and will contact them at a later stage regarding several topical issues taken from this conference”

 “Feeling more positive about health improvement across the city - my own 'drop in the ocean' is worth doing”

Speaker Presentations

Please find details of all speaker presentations, these can be downloaded below in the related downloads section of this page.

Best City… for Health and Wellbeing - Tom Riordan, Chief Executive, Leeds City Council

Being the best city in the UK - Healthy Lives, Healthy Leeds - Dr Ian Cameron, Joint Director of Public Health NHS Airedale,Bradford & Leeds/LeedsCityCouncil 

Scaling up behaviour change - Professor Mike Kelly, Director of the Centre of Public Health Excellence at NICE

JSNA in the New World - Lucy Jackson, Consultant in Public Health

Early Engagement - raising and tackling the issues surrounding lifestyle, habit and health - Damian Edwards, National Obesity Forum Behavioural Advisor & Training Director for hdm-medical

Workshops

Presentations from the workshops are available to download here.

Quick Fire Session Presentations

Presentations from the quick fire session are available from the related downloads section below.

Market Stalls

A list of organisations who provided market stalls at the Health and Wellbeing Conference and their contact details is available to download below.

Feedback

If you have any other comments about this year's conference or would like to request a certificate of attendance please email healthandwellbeing.conference@nhs.net.