Earlier this year, thousands of Greater Manchester residents responded to the Taking Charge Together health snapshot survey and conversation. More than half of you (55%) said that you would like to be more physically active in order to improve your health and wellbeing.
Physical inactivity has been identified as the fourth leading contributor for global mortality by the World Health Organisation and tackling it locally is a top priority for the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership.
That’s why we are now asking for more details on the barriers that are stopping you from moving more click here to take part
In April, three main reasons were highlighted, a lack of confidence, time and place to do it.
It’s not just about exercise though. We want to know more about your habits and the things that prevent you from getting the recommended 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderate activity into your regular week.
Is it a sedentary job or a lack of accessible facilities that are sucking the energy out of you? Is it time and stress levels making things difficult? Or is it confidence and fear of judgement that are the hurdles too big to overcome?
Wendy Meredith, Greater Manchester Director of Population Health, said:
“We know that being active helps prevent many of the leading causes of ill health in Greater Manchester, such as coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
“We want to understand better some of the root causes and barriers that stop people from making the first steps to more active lives.
“This doesn’t need to be intense exercise though, simply moving more can make a huge difference so we want to dig deeper into what stops people being more active and what ideas they have to overcome this.”
Please spare a few minutes to join in the conversation – click here . You could also win a fitbit just by taking part! The survey is open from today (Friday 17 June) until Friday 1 July.
The feedback will be used to help Health and Social Care bosses tackle some of the worst health outcomes in the country, by:
• revealing insight into what the people of Greater Manchester believe blocks or enables healthy choices
• helping health and care officials to design services that can deliver the greatest and fastest improvement in the region’s health and wellbeing
• identifying great work in the region that can be celebrated and developed at scale across the region
It will be added to the insight from the Taking Charge Together campaign, where we asked the region’s residents, carers and 100,000 public sector employees to share their struggles and successes in making healthy lifestyle choices, as the region takes responsibility for a £6billion health and social care budget.
In all, more than 50,000 people viewed either the campaign website or related materials on the Health and Social Care Partnership home site, while a further 6,500 face-to-face contacts were made via community roadshow events and focus groups, organised by Key 103 and the community and voluntary sector and Healthwatch partnership respectively.
The survey results are already providing an invaluable snapshot of people’s perceptions of health, with 91% of respondents identifying some feature of their health and wellbeing that they would like to improve.
The details of which can be found here
