Poetry to prevent childhood obesity? The Healthy Heart Poetry Project.

Unhealthy lifestyle in children increases risk of premature and preventable heart disease in later life. Since 2011, 22 schools have received Healthy Heart Awards from the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust. Schools participating in the Healthy Heart initiative receive a Healthy Heart Award certificate to recognize their interest in education about how to keep the heart healthy.




Healthy heart poetry for schools was a theme during the 6th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine held in London on 22nd May 2015. 


Listen to the talk on healthy hearts for schools 

Poet Wendy French described a schools project she undertook with 2015 Hippocrates Prize

Wendy French

judge Rebecca Goss as part of a collaboration between the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust and the Hippocrates Initiative. Raphael Shirley read poems by children from the edited anthology Love your Heart which arose from the project.


The Cardiovascular Research Trust established Healthy Heart Poetry in 2013 in partnership with the Hippocrates Initiative. 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.

There is now an annual Healthy Heart Poetry event at which the children have the opportunity to read their poems from the published Anthology, and Healthy Heart Awards are presented to participating schools. Selected poems are published in an anthology, the first of which, Love your Heart, was published in December 2014. 

The Poetry and Medicine Symposium was held to mark the announcement of the winners of the 2015 Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. The Hippocrates Prize is an annual award with a closing date of 31st January 2016 for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize.

See more about entering for the 2016 Hippocrates Prize. 



With a 1st prize of £5000 for the winning poem in the Open International category of  £5,000, £5000 for the 1st Prize in the NHS category, and £500 for the Young Poets Award the Hippocrates Prize is one of the highest value poetry awards in the world for a single poem. In its first 5 years, the Hippocrates Prize has attracted over 6000 entries from over 60 countries, from the Americas to Fiji and Finland to Australasia.

Healthy heart charity CVRT and Hippocrates Initiative jointly launch Healthy Heart Poetry project by and for school children and young people

On behalf of the healthy heart charity the Cardiovascular Research Trust (CVRT), London-based poets Wendy French and Rebecca Goss will be editing a book of poems on the heart written by children for children of all ages. 

Entries are welcome from anywhere in the world from schools or individually from children and young people. 

Wendy said: “The aim is to bring to children, from an early age, awareness of the importance of keeping the heart healthy through diet and exercise. The idea for this came from a pilot poetry project in schools in and around London. Please do get your pupils writing! Our experience of this type of project in schools has shown that it can be very exciting both for pupils and teachers."

She added: "We would like as many children and older school students to enter as possible so we have a wide selection of poems to choose from. The book will be published in print and online by the Hippocrates Press for Poetry and Medicine. The book will be launched at a celebration in London on December 4th 2014, which children and older school students and their teachers will be invited to attend.”

The closing date for entries is 12 midnight GMT July 16^th 2014.

Poems may be entered on-line (see the Hippocrates website link) or sent to
Wendy French at 4 Myton Road, West Dulwich, London, SE21 8EB. 

Wendy has a quiz devised by the CVRT on the heart and can email this with lesson plan suggestions to teachers who are interested.

Kidshealth also has very helpful facts to help get started on the project.

The book will be divided into four sections, selected poems by primary children, selected poems by secondary school students, and a section devoted to heart healthy recipes supplied by anyone of school age. 

Medical professor Donald Singer said: “This looks a very interesting way to engage children and young people actively in understanding ways to prevent heart disease. I will be adding a section in the book on how to keep the heart healthy so that book could be used in schools for teaching about health as well as just for pure enjoyment of the poems."

See YouTube videos of examples of Healthy Heart Poetry by schools from the 2013 CVRT Healthy Heart Awards:

Little Red Balloon: from Chevening C.E. Primary School - read by Raphael Shirley

Heart or Else: heart poem from Chevening C.E. Primary School read by Raphael Shirley

Healthy Heart Poem during Assembly - performed by Year 6Ws at Dulwich Hamlet Junior School

You can read more about the Healthy Heart Poetry initiative on the Hippocrates website.

If you wish any further information or would like to help by involving your local school in the project, or in other ways, you can contact Wendy French on wendy.french6@btinternet.com 

New Hippocrates Prize for schools launched

@HealthMed

The Hippocrates Initiative has launched the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets for an unpublished poem of up to 50 lines (excluding the title) in English on a medical theme.

Entrants may be young poets from anywhere in the world who must be aged 14 to 18 years on the closing date for entries - midnight GMT 1st March, 2013.

The first prize is GBP 500 for the winning young poets, with a further 10 awards of commendation for the most highly rated entries.

The Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets will be judged by English poet and playwright Clare Pollard.

Clare Pollard said: “Having my poetry published when I was sixteen altered my life.  It made me believe I could actually be a writer, and vow to work as hard as I could to make it happen. 

 “The great thing about poetry is that age doesn't matter. It's hard as a teenager to find the time and stamina to write a perfect novel, but you can write three perfect verses.  If you put down the things you really want to say about our world, in your own voice, you will have written a powerful poem.”

Born in 1978 and raised in Bolton, she read English at Cambridge University. She published her first collection, The Heavy-Petting Zoo, with Bloodaxe in 1998 aged 19.

Awards will be announced on Saturday 18th May, 2013 at the end of the 4th International Symposium on Poetry and Medicine, at the Wellcome Collection Rooms, Euston Road, London.

The inaugural Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets is supported by the UK medical charity the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine and the UK National Association of Writers in Education.

Further information on the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets will be announced shortly.

Enter online for the Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets

Website for the Hippocrates Prize

Healthy heart awards

The results of the inaugural 2011 ‘Healthy Heart Awards’ were announced on Thursday 14th July 2011 at a Symposium on Exercise and Cardiovascular Health organised in London by the Cardiovascular Research Trust. The overall 2011 award and best secondary school award went to the Enterprise Club of the Joseph Leckie CTC, Walsall. Best primary school award went to Forsbrook Primary, Stoke-on-Trent. And a ‘highly commended' award went to Hill West Primary School, Sutton Coldfield.  

The Cardiovascular Research Trust, supported by HTI, launched these new Healthy Heart Awards for schools and colleges in November 2010. The challenge for entrants to the 'Healthy Heart Awards' was to develop ideas for interactive educational ‘Healthy Heart’ programmes. The aim of the awards is to engage young and older school and college students from around the world in the health of their hearts. The aim of the award is to engage young and older school and college students in their health. 

Entries were to consist of original material and could include: a logo; pictures and names for suggested characters; text and images for and about helpful messages about health and the heart, favourite sports and activities, healthy foods and how they can help the heart, unhealthy things to avoid, how unhealthy things can harm the heart, heart problems; questions and quizzes; outlines for moving picture sequences for games to link any of the above; other ideas which could add to an educational ‘Healthy heart’ game. The organisers hoped that participating children and students would enjoy taking part, and that the Awards would provide an innovative opportunity for teaching and learning relevant to the curriculum, both for science and health.

Ben Edge, teacher at Joseph Leckie Community Technology College, winner of the overall 2011 Healthy Heart Awards, was impressed by the science learning, team-working, interest in health, and development of enterprise and commercial skills that taking part in the Awards inspired in his school students. He observed that “The ‘Healthy Heart App’ challenge from the CVRT allowed the students the opportunity to work towards a common goal as part of a team.

He added: "the students really enjoyed designing games and characters for the App, as well as researching and developing educational materials that teenagers can use to educate themselves about maintaining a healthy heart. The Joseph Leckie CTC Enterprise Club were able to develop important Enterprise and Commercial thinking skills by working towards the criteria provided by The CVRT.”

Mrs Emma Hindmarch, Year 6 Teacher at Forsbrook in the West Midlands, winner of the Primary School category in the 2011 Healthy Heart Awards, said, "We are absolutely thrilled to have won the Healthy Heart Primary School Award. The children really enjoyed researching good and bad things about the heart.  It was also a fun way for them to work together to revise the school's science curriculum."

Pupils from Hill West Primary also enjoyed taking part:

Khadeim, Year Six, said "I was really excited to be able to enter this competition which involved us developing an app that could help other children realise what is needed for a healthy heart."

Emily, Year Six, added: 'the whole experience was incredibly informative, I learnt a lot moreover I am happy to be educating other children in an exciting way via an app."



From the teaching perspective, Mrs Diane Hardeman, the teaching Assistant who co-ordinated the Hill West entry, said: "the competition enabled our pupils to use their scientific knowledge in a fun and esciting way. It is wonderful to see their efforts have been acknowledged furthermore we all look forward to seeing the app once it has been developed."

Award winning schools and colleges will have their entries incorporated into an ‘app’ to help children and young people around the world to find out more about the heart and how to keep it as healthy as possible.

Entries for the 2012 Healthy Heart Awards open 1st October, 2011. 

Winners of the The 2012 Healthy Heart Awards will be announced in Summer 2012 in London at a Symposium on Cardiovascular Health organized by the Cardiovascular Research Trust.