Lewisham plans to test its 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
- Trailblazer posters continue to be displayed on JCDecaux donated estate and a schedule is confirmed with Lewisham Communication teams for posters to be displayed across all 44 council information boards every six weeks until end June 2022
- Poster campaign produced by young people ‘Love Lewisham Businesses’ displayed across 44 council boards for four weeks, 56 sites in total.
- Poster campaign ‘Live your best life’ displayed across 56 sites for two weeks
- Agreement with JCDecaux for any void estate to display health promotion messages
- Undertaken two street survey of over 200 residents during
- Case study on the Lewisham trailblazer submitted to Co-operative Councils Innovation Network to demonstrate how councils are working with local people to build strong and resilient neighbourhoods
- COTP logo and branding work ongoing
- Lewisham has commissioned Kings and Guys and St Thomas’ hospitals to tailor the weight management programme aimed at ethnic groups.
Challenges
- Further COVID restrictions will impact on advertising estate and may limit ability to influence additional advertising companies in proposed timeframe
- Lack of engagement with local communities on co-production process. Community organisations not ready to take on additional/new work - volunteer /organisation fatigue due to COVID response.
- Progress with two key initiatives has been intermittent as many businesses closed/amended service model due to COVID. Schools closed for majority of this reporting period with focus on infection rates prior to school holidays.
Learnings
- Poster design: important for the council to own copyright
- Visual narratives to help increase community engagement around health promotion campaigns are more impactful than text
- Include opportunities for training/upskilling participants as an integral part of the programme
- Understand the best format to share communications information before starting the process of developing a resource.
Next steps
- Continue talks to try and engage other media owners into the Lewisham voluntary restrictions
- Local delivery partner to continue work on developing co-production framework supporting successful bids, shared narrative and vision about food environment with food businesses, facilitation of workshop sessions with wider stakeholders
- Develop nutrition resources for Black African and Caribbean communities – following learning from insight work and stakeholder reference group
- Repeat street survey, train young people as fieldwork researchers and participate in the street surveys this quarter.