Lewisham plan to test their powers to restrict advertising of products high in fat, salt or sugar and utilise unsold advertising space to promote tailored local health promotion campaigns co-designed with the community.
The Childhood Obesity Trailblazer Programme is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and administered by the Local Government Association. Public Health England also providing expert support and advice.
Progress
- Four posters on display in Lewisham - ‘Shelter from the Sugar Storm’, ‘Sugar Smart’ produced by local young people, the third poster was designed by the Young Mayor’s team and references Sugar Smart and the fourth poster was designed by a freelance nutritionist and a group of students with the aim of the work being to link eating well with feeling emotionally well. These will be rotated around the borough and on display for the foreseeable future
- Expressions of interest for co-production work is going well, there is a good communication push around it and Lewisham is currently working on a storyboard to support the work - deadline for EOI submission is end of September 2021
- Lewisham are planning to create a trailblazer logo and branding
- Case study on the work of the Young Mayor’s team now finalised
- Evaluation process revised and refined
- The reference group and Lewisham Obesity Alliance have good local representation and are working well – alliance meeting is taking place in autumn to review action plan, prioritise work and decide on next steps
Learnings
- Internal comms team have provided very valuable support to the work
- The EOI process provided an opportunity to work closely with interested parties and form good working relationships
- To have in place support mechanisms for partner working at the start of the process
Challenges
- Each group/partner Lewisham have worked with have had different requirements levels of needs which was unexpected and taken more time and resources than anticipated in providing briefs, guidance and project management support
- Comms capacity has been very limited throughout but improving now
Next steps
- Reviewing EOI applications
- Outsmart to start talks to engage media owners; Outsmart and JCDecaux to support workshops set up by community organisation
- Resuming conversations with businesses & schools, undertaking stocktake of current position
- Supporting schools to implement initiative in different ways & exploring different ways of working with food businesses
- Resuming implementation of the Healthier Catering Commitment scheme in late summer
- Stakeholder reference group to help build common food environment narrative - work started on joint narrative for food businesses
- Promotion of SugarSmart & resuming Healthier Catering Commitment scheme for food businesses