Birmingham City Council: Year 2 Q2 update

The Childhood Obesity Trailblazer Programme is funded by the Department and Health and Social Care and administered by the Local Government Association. Public Health England also providing expert support and advice. Birmingham plans to test its powers to influence the social and economic determinants of health to shift towards a healthier food and physical activity economy and environment.


Progress

  • The content of the developer toolkit has been endorsed by the leadership team and relevant forum of the Health and Well-being board.
  • The toolkit is being used in two new developments – the Perry Barr Masterplan and the Edgbaston Reservoir Supplementary Planning Document
  • Initial market scoping has taken place to inform metrics for the Birmingham basket and a full tender process will be initiated shortly
  • Partnership workshop held with key partners to refine draft course content for employment, skills and training.
  • Baseline data collection evaluation process and methodology has been agreed for the spiral curriculum for apprenticeships.

Learnings

  • A Digital Treasure Hunt has shown us that there are significant gaps in food purchasing data at a local level. We have decided a full competitive tender process should be utilised to ensure we commission the most innovative, and value for money solution.
  • Development of the Spiral Curriculum evaluation framework took longer than anticipated. The associated ethical approval for the evaluation would indicate that during similar exercises going forward should allow longer lead-in times to ensure this is accounted for.

Challenges

  • Lack of data, information and insight relating to food and behaviour at a local level
  • There has been a significant impact on local Public Health capacity, as well as the capacity of key partners, due to the developing and ongoing COVID-19 situation in Birmingham.

Next steps

  • Full tender process to be initiated to collect data for the Birmingham Baseline mapping of “on-programme” participant skills and knowledge (health and wellbeing).  Base line data collection to commence.