Leicester's Healthy Heart campaign

This morning, while I’m in a meeting of REDP’s Working Group at Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL), I receive a call from Ajey Sharma, Senior Marketing Officer, Directorate of Quality, Communications and Engagement, NHS Leicester City. He tells me about a new campaign that’s been launched in Leicester encouraging people to put on their walking shoes to help live longer, healthier, happier lives by reducing their risk of heart disease. Leicester’s Healthy Heart initiative is challenging people to try and walk as many minutes as possible this summer to improve their health and fitness, and help reduce their risk of heart disease.

By signing up to the campaign people can record all the minutes they have walked online and try to improve on their total each week. Team entries are also being encouraged, where people will be able to create or join a team to compete with friends and colleagues to walk the most minutes. Leicester’s Healthy Heart walking challenge runs until 2 September 2011, with prizes on offer to participating walkers and groups.

People can register at any time by visiting www.leicestershealthyheart.co.uk and those without internet access can also join the challenge by registering at their local Leicester library and posting details of their walking minutes using freepost forms.

Walking is being presented as one simple activity people can do as part of four simple steps to reduce the risk of heart disease, alongside others such as: giving up smoking; eating a healthy, balanced diet; increasing physical activity; drinking less alcohol.

Ajey would like the Council of Faiths to help publicise this campaign among the faith communities in the city. I tell him that I’ll publicise this initiative through our blog and other means. The proposal arises later of helping organise walking groups from one place of worship in the city to another, bringing together people of different backgrounds, communities and traditions in a new way – while also doing something to improve their health. Not much time to explore that, but it definitely sounds worthwhile if we can make it happen. There’s a possibility that this might be something for which we could apply for funding from Near Neighbours.