Building Health Partnerships in Calderdale and Wakefield

Posted on: 6 August 2019

For West Yorkshire and Harrogate, the aim of our collaboration with the Institute for Voluntary Action Research, through its Building Health Partnerships programme, has been to work with community and voluntary groups to improve the health of people across two specific localities, Calderdale and Wakefield.

Each locality has focussed on a different initiative but they both emphasise the importance of prevention and self-care.

The project in Calderdale is focussing on conditions that lead to muscle and joint pain and how, through promoting good health and activity at an earlier age, people can reduce the early onset of such conditions. Students from Calderdale College, who attended our planning event in November 2018, were keen to have more options - away from busy gyms and formal exercise classes - for taking part in physical activity. From these discussions ‘a walk in the hills’ pilot scheme was developed.

The first of these walks took place in June 2019 when a group of students, led by local volunteers, walked around Calderdale’s beautiful countryside whilst talking about their ideas for staying fit and healthy and how they could share those ideas with others as the scheme is scaled up over the coming months. 

Eyes Right Toolkit Image.jpgFor the Wakefield project, the Partnership in collaboration with Wakefield Council’s Public Health team, worked with its partner organisations, local people and VCSE groups to raise awareness of eye health. Half of all cases of sight loss are preventable and one of the key factors in preventing sight loss is having regular sight tests.

Several community groups were introduced to the Eyes Right Toolkit which is a simple tool designed to screen near and distant vision in adults that can be used by anybody. It gives a good indication if there’s a problem with the eyes that would need further investigation.

The toolkit is currently being used by Carers Wakefield which provides this free eye screening for some of the 36,000 carers in the area routinely as part of its support work. This initiative is offering real benefits for local carers who often forget about their own health because they are too busy thinking about someone else’s. 
 

 

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