Welcome to the first edition of our Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy newsletter covering the latest news, updates, developments, and best practice in relation to the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy.
Through this newsletter and our social media channels, we hope to:
- Raise awareness of the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy and 2022-24 Delivery Plan, including its themes, priorities and deliverables
- Identify, celebrate and champion individuals and organisations that demonstrate good practice in the delivery of the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy
- Empower, inspire and unite partners and stakeholders to support in preventing and reducing obesity in Wales
- Work with key partners and stakeholders to identify insight on the strategy’s impact
With obesity prevalence in Wales rising, we all have a role to play in making it easier for people to live healthier lives - from helping to deliver healthy settings and environments, to supporting people to make healthier food and activity choices.
We know that preventing and reducing obesity is a complex challenge. What we eat and how active we are is not just down to the choices an individual makes. There are many contributing factors, including the environment we work, live and play in.
The complexity of the problem means there are no simple solutions. No one agency, organisation or sector can solve it alone. The only way to make progress is if we share our collective understanding and learning and work together.
In this first edition, we’ll provide you with the latest updates and highlight a few initiatives which are helping to reduce and prevent obesity. We’ll also introduce you to one of our five Healthy Weight Ambassadors and demonstrate how they are helping to raise awareness of the importance of moving more and eating well.
 Healthy Weight Healthy You
Last month marked the launch of the Healthy Weight, Healthy You campaign from Public Health Wales providing free independent expert advice that people can trust to support them in achieving and maintaining a healthy weight through healthy eating and being active.
The Healthy Weight, Healthy You website is for adults in Wales and provides self-directed support for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. As well as being part of the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy, it is part of the NHS and follows the level 1 All-Wales Weight Management Pathway that focuses on self-management and professional brief advice or early intervention.
you support adults who are above a healthy weight, please let them know about the campaign. You can share our posts on Twitter and Facebook or visit the Information for Professionals page for further resources and training.
 Fit Fans
FIT FANS uses interest in football to attract adults aged 35-65 to a free, healthy lifestyle, multicomponent programme delivered by coaching staff at their local professional football club charity.
The programme, delivered through a partnership between Welsh Government, the Football Association of Wales and EFL Trust, is proven to help people achieve significant long-term improvements in weight loss, physical activity, diet and psychological wellbeing. Participants on average lost over 5% of their body weight during the 12-week programme.
The pilot phase in Wales involves Swansea City, Newport Country and Cardiff City Football clubs, with more clubs across Wales being added later on in the year.
How can you help?
We ask that you spread the word amongst your networks of this new community initiative which is aimed at those with a BMI over 28 (it is designed to align with level 2 of health boards’ weight management pathways). People can apply directly or be referred by health or social care professionals.
To find out more, check out this video we have created and get in touch with the pilot clubs on the details below.
Cardiff City FC - Fit Bluebirds
Website: cardiffcityfcfoundation.org.uk
Contact: fitbluebirds@cardiffcityfc.org.uk
Swansea City AFC - Fit Jacks
Website: swanseacity.com/community/
Contact: https://form.jotform.com/SwansFdn/FITJACKSInterest
Newport County AFC - Fit Exiles
Website: countyinthecommunity.co.uk
Twitter: @CountyCommunity
Contact: fitfans@countyinthecommunity.co.uk
 Healthy Food Environment Consultation Results
A summary of the responses to the Healthy Food Environment Consultation and the Proposal to end the sale of energy drinks to children under 16 have now been published. Alongside these documents are summaries of the main engagement activities – a series of qualitative workshops and surveys engaging with key stakeholders as well as the wider public.
The links to these reports are as below:
Healthy food environment
Proposal to end the sale of energy drinks to children under 16
The summaries aim to provide an overview of the responses received and highlight some of the recurring themes. All of the consultation responses and engagement will be taken into account in finalising the approach to improving our food and drink environments.
Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Wellbeing, Lynne Neagle will announce our future approach this spring. At this time, we will also launch a technical consultation on how best to structure and enforce proposals taken forward.
 Active environments: Radnor Primary School
A key focus for the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy is creating active environments that support and motivate people to be more active. This includes projects that make green spaces, sport and recreation opportunities more accessible as well as making active travel the obvious choice in terms of safety, convenience and cost.
As part of the Active Travel Wales Act, local authorities have been improving and creating active travel routes across Wales to help us rethink the way in which we commute. This will not only impact our physical and mental health but will also improve our air quality and help prevent climate change.
Radnor Primary School in Canton, Cardiff is a great example of a school embracing active travel. It is committed to changing behaviours across its community and is an inspiration for other schools to follow. It is the second school in Wales to achieve the Sustrans Cymru Gold Active Travel School Award which has resulted in significant and lasting organisational, cultural, and behavioural changes in how the school community travel. Watch our video where ambassador Emily Brooks visits the school to find out how others can take key steps to increase and sustain the number of pupils travelling to school actively.
 Food Cardiff: Good Food Goals
In 2021, Cardiff was awarded Silver Sustainable Food Places status. It is the first place in Wales to achieve this level of accolade. The awards recognise pioneering food partnerships across the UK that are exemplars in increasing healthy and sustainable food. Now Food Cardiff is setting its sights on gold – hoping to achieve Gold Sustainable Food Places status by the year 2024.
The Good Food Goals campaign highlights actions that people in Cardiff can take as individuals, organisations or businesses to support a shared vision of a city in which the food that is grown, bought or eaten in Cardiff is healthy, environmentally sustainable, empowering, thriving and connected.
To find out more about the campaign and how you can become part of the growing movement in Cardiff, visit the Food Cardiff website
Food Cardiff is one of seven food partnerships supported by Food Sense Wales. The partnerships bring together a range of stakeholders including local government, health professionals, community groups, third sector organisations and local businesses to deliver innovative projects that provide healthy, affordable and sustainable food and benefit the local economy. The ambition is to establish a network of food partnerships across Wales. To find out more about sustainable food places, what is happening in your area, and how you can support your local community to be a sustainable food place, visit the Food Sense Wales website
Our ambassadors have a key role in helping us raise awareness of the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy. They help us to build our networks, engage with stakeholders and visit best practice projects across Wales. If you are interested in hearing more about the work of our ambassadors, get in touch at HealthyWeightHealthyWales@gov.wales
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Introducing Aled Brew Born in Cardiff, Aled is a former Wales international rugby union player representing his country since he was 17 years old. After retiring from rugby in 2020, Aled now works in business, and as Dad of two children, he is passionate about sharing his knowledge about health and fitness to inspire everyone to take responsibility for their own wellbeing.
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Workforce Wellbeing Did you know that in Wales around 7.7 million days of work are lost to sickness absence every year, the equivalent of 5.2 days per worker? The workplace offers many opportunities for promoting healthy lifestyles and supporting employees to make behaviour changes such as moving more and eating more healthily.
In a blog for Chambers Wales, Aled Brew discusses what employers could be doing to support their employees to live healthier lives.
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 Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales Event
We will be holding briefings every quarter for stakeholders, providing insight and inspiration from across Wales. Our first virtual briefing will be held on:
Thursday 30th March 12.00 – 13.00
There will be a communications theme to the first event. Public Health Wales will explain how user research and insight influenced the narrative, messaging, and design of their Healthy Weight, Healthy You website and campaign. They will be joined by Jam jar who will tell you about our Healthy Weight Healthy Wales Ambassadors and building an engaged stakeholder network in Wales. We will send out further details on what we have planned, but save the date in your diary now to avoid disappointment!
You can help us...
You can help us to spread the word by:
- Talking about the strategy amongst your networks
- Engaging with your networks to encourage partnership working to address the problem
- Following us on social media
- Encouraging others to sign up to our newsletter via the following: public.govdelivery.com/accounts/UKWALES/subscriber/new
You can help us to deliver our strategy goals by:
- Feeding back any concerns or opportunities relating to the strategy by emailing us at: HealthyWeightHealthyWales@gov.wales
- Telling us about the great work happening in your area. If you have completed or are in the process of coordinating a project, campaign or initiative which you’d like us to profile, please send your details along with a project overview to: HealthyWeightHealthyWales@gov.wales so that we can in turn empower, inspire and unite others across Wales.
Here are a few forthcoming dates and items of interest relating to the Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales strategy:
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February to April: Eat Them to Defeat Them
The multi-award-winning campaign and associated schools’ programme has been a huge success and it’s back in February 2023, ready to influence children’s eating habits for the better for yet another year. To download a series of billingual lesson plans, posters, reward charts and other activities created with funding from Welsh Government, visit Eat Them to Defeat Them
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9th March: International School Meals Day
This year, the focus is on ‘Our changing food’ – looking at changes in methods, menus and examples of how specific meals have changed over time. International School Meals Day is supported by the Welsh Government and Children in Wales. Further information and resources are available at Hwb
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20th - 31st March: Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel
The UK’s largest inter-school walking, wheeling, scooting and cycling challenge will take place around the country. It aims to inspire hundreds of thousands of pupils to get active during the school run. For information on how to enter your local school,visit Big Walk and Wheel
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