Flora Fit Street - Promoting healthy living

Coronary Heart Disease is the single most common cause of early death (under 75 years) in the UK. A partnership between Flora and Clapham Park NDC was launched in June 2004 and was the first such public private partnership of its kind. The project attracted £330k of local Government funding and quite simply, set out to show how the adoption of a healthier lifestyle could lead to significant improvements in the heart health of local residents.

Process

Flora teamed up with Clapham Park, a community in South London, to transform the heart health of the local people. The project was called ‘Fit Street’ and the activities began in June 2004.

The Flora Fit Street project ran for a whole year and gave Clapham Park Residents the chance to choose to take part in a whole range of different activities and workshops all designed to help the community improve their heart health. These ranged from Tai Chi and salsa dancing to a 5-a-side football classes and power walking clubs.

Flora Fit Street aimed to bring the community together and continue the good work of the Clapham Park Project, a 10 year regeneration project funded by the New Deal for Communities Programme. Alongside all the fun activities, residents in the area had the opportunity to get a free heart health screening. The screening sessions took place throughout the year long project all around the Clapham Park area.

The team worked with the 3 primary schools in Clapham Park to design a unique programme of activity and educational assemblies for each child in the area. This included supporting Walking Buses, Gardening projects, Break-time games and Heart Health Class assemblies. This was aimed at getting school kids interested in eating and growing their own fruit and vegetables, and learning about the importance of keeping your heart healthy.

For the elderly and those with mobility problems, Flora offered armchair aerobics and supplied a brand new Flora Fit Street minibus to take residents needing transport assistance to and from some of the activities (like tea dancing).

Impact

  • These showed that that a lifestyle intervention project such as this can generate short term improvements in modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. These included; lower cholesterol levels, an increase in the uptake of a healthier diet, a positive change in motivation and behaviour patterns regarding exercise.
  • Whilst this study only measured residents over a 12 week period, the year long project engaged with thousands of residents who enjoyed a huge increase in the range of health and fitness services and facilities (all free or heavily subsidised) available to them. These included free Heart Health MOT tests of which over 1000 were taken up.
  • The Fit Street Shop, a legacy of the successful Flora Fit Street project will continue to make available health and lifestyle advice for residents in an effort to reduce high cholesterol and raised blood pressure levels within Clapham Park, key risk factors for coronary heart disease. The shop provided: up-to-date health promotional information, one-to-one testing and advice (provided by the Men’s Health Project) and an accessible local setting for the Clapham Park Time Bank (mental health) and Healthy Living Programme.

See also

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