Keeping weight in check - does the weight of the adviser matter?

A wide range of advisers - from family doctors to pharmacists - can be effective in providing lifestyle advice aimed at reducing risk of serious diseases of the heart, brain and circulation - including advice on diet and exercise aiming to help with weight loss.
However a new study, organised by the Royal Society for Public Health, suggests that people seeking advice on weight loss are less likely to take it seriously from someone who is overweight, whether from a health professional or another source, including hairdressers and celebrities.
In response to this report, the Royal Society for Public Health is recommending that NHS staff not only advise 'do what I say'  but also 'do what I do' when it comes to advise on weight loss – ie NHS staff and others involved in advice on reversing overweight should be aware of the importance of acting as role models to help the public at risk to engage in losing weight.
A major challenge for the NHS as "more than half its 1.3 million-strong workforce, are estimated to be overweight or obese".

See more on the study

Call for papers for 2015 International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine and Hippocrates Awards

Registration is open for the 6th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine to be held on Saturday 23rd May 2015  in London. The symposium will include poster sessions, lectures, round table discussions and poetry readings (by former President of the Poetry Society Jo Shapcott and 2012 Hippocrates Awards judge Marilyn Hacker). The 2015 Hippocrates Open International, International Young Poet and NHS Awards will be announced at the end of the Symposium. 

The programme includes sessions on historical and contemporary themes, illness and poetry, poetry as therapy, poetry in the education of medical students, nurses and doctors, and poetry as an aid to health professionals..

Abstract submission is open - deadline 31st March 2015.
 
The Hippocrates initiative was named winner of the Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts in the 2011 Times Higher Education awards, announced on 24th November 2011 in London. This award aims to recognise the collaborative and interdisciplinary work that is taking place in universities to promote the arts. 
The deadline for entries for the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for poetry and medicine, which is for unpublished poems in English, is 12 midnight GMT on 31st January 2015.  

The Hippocrates poetry and medicine initiative has been supported by the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, the Wellcome Trust, the Cardiovascular Research Trust, Heads, Teachers and Industry, and the National Association of Writers in Education. 

In its first 5 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 6000 entries from 61 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.

With a 1st prize for the winning poem in each category of £5,000, the Hippocrates prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In each category there is also a 2^nd prize of £1,000, 3^rd  prize of £500, and 20 commendations each of £50.  

The judging panel for the 2015 Hippocrates Awards for Poetry and Medicine comprises poet Rebecca Goss, BBC broadcaster and author John  Humphrys poet and psychiatrist and poet Professor Femi Oyebode.

See more on the 2015 Hippocrates Awards and the Hippocrates initiative. 

Digital Health: Catapulting Personalised Medicine Forward

In a new collaboration, on 27th November 2014 the UK’s Digital Catapult, the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, IDEALondon, and Vital Transformation brought together leading experts working at the frontiers of research where personalised medicine and medicines, and health technologies intersect.

 

Round table sessions featured demonstrations of how next-generation technologies and social media will integrate with public health, thus facilitating the burgeoning market for personalised medicines. The symposium included disruptive start-ups and technology practitioners finding common ground in bringing secure personal health data to the public and advice on stratified medicines to prescribers and their patients.

 

The Digital Catapult, launched in November 2014, aims to place electronic and mobile technologies at the forefront of their future public health strategy. 

Publications arising from the symposium will be published in the FPM journal Health Policy and Technology.

 

See the meeting agenda and speakers. 

 

See conference report.

Poetry to keep the heart healthy

• Healthy Heart Poetry publications
• Healthy Heart Awards
• Healthy Heart Poetry 2014
• Online schools entry for healthy heart poetry or heart healthy recipe for 2015 Anthology
• Videos of Healthy Heart Poetry by schools

The Hippocrates Initiative established Healthy Heart Poetry in early 2013 in partnership with the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust. The aim of the Healthy Heart Poetry initiative is to encourage interest among children of all ages in lifestyle that helps to keep the heart healthy. 

We thought that both writing poems on keeping the heart healthy and planning and writing heart healthy recipes would form excellent themes for a school lesson on a number of subject areas.

Selected poems are published in an anthology, the first of which, Love your Heart, was published on 4th December 2014. 

Entries are now open for poems from children for consideration for the 2015 Healthy Heart Poetry anthology, deadline 1st July 2015.

There is an annual Healthy Heart Poetry event at which the Healthy Heart Poetry Anthology is launched, the children have the opportunity to read their poems from the published Anthology, and Healthy Heart Awards are presented to participating schools.
The 2014 Healthy Heart Poetry event took place in London on 4th December and included the launch of the Love your Heart anthology of poems on the heart by children for children, and presentation of Healthy Heart Awards to 19 schools.

2014 Healthy Heart Awards - London, 4th December

Healthy Heart Poetry publications
Love your Heart: An anthology of poems by children for children about heart health.
Edited by Wendy French and Rebecca Goss with notes on heart health by Donald Singer
64 pages. ISBN 978-0-9572571-4-6
Published by The Hippocrates Press, London: 4th December, 2014.
Order Love your Heart online

Healthy Heart Awards for schools
Schools participating in our Healthy Heart initiative receive a Healthy Heart Award certificate to recognize their interest in education about how to keep the heart healthy. 
22 schools have since 2011 received Healthy Heart Awards from the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust.
See the list of schools which have received Healthy Heart Awards

YouTube videos of Healthy Heart Poetry by schools

Healthy Heart Awards: 4th December 2014

Healthy Heart Awards: 5th December 2013