Newham tackles obesity to mark international awareness day

Over 130 people attended Newham’s World Obesity Day event at Durning Hall Community Centre, Forest Gate on Monday 4 March.  The event provided a range of information, activities and support to help local people eat well, keep active and improve their overall health and wellbeing.

Well Newham, from the London Borough of Newham Local Authority, organised the event and it featured an impressive range of local health partners, which shows just how much support is out there for local residents. There were also so many different activities on offer, from healthy eating to activities you can do from your chair, and everyone took part in these throughout the day.

Councillor Neil Wilson gave the opening speech, which was followed by a breathing exercise that everyone did to set the scene for the day. As part of a packed and engaging agenda, the event organisers also showed North East London Cancer Alliance’s healthy exercise video, which was well received and has hopefully inspired more people to take a more proactive approach to getting essential exercise.

They also showed the cancer alliance's healthy eating video later in the day, which linked in well with the healthy food demonstrations, explaining how simple and cost effective but tasty a basic salad can be (a sample was given to everyone). 

Diane Gypps, Patient Experience and Engagement Manger, said: Throughout the event, there were breaks when people were able to visit the market stalls all around the venue. We spoke with many people about cancer screening, early diagnosis, and living with cancer. We also talked to people about becoming a patient partner and several were very interested.

“We took away several contacts from Well Newham and other health organisations, who we hope to continue working with in the future.”

As part of our attendance at the event, we also had a range of cancer information leaflets. Councillor Wilson from the London Borough of Newham Council commented that the Alliance had provided information in a variety of different languages and that this was to be commended. 

This is an area we will continue to work on with our different partners across north east London and we are always looking for new ways to reach out to our different communities. If you have any ideas how we can do this, please contact us.

For more information

Watch our video series on tops tips to reduce your risk of cancer.

View our web pages on free cancer screening programmes.