The UK's growing obesity crisis is most serious in Scotland. The National
Institute for Health Research is tackling this challenge head on. Well one
study is evaluating an innovative scheme that is changing the lives of overweight
Scottish football fans. We sent Ed Barron to find out why these fans are now so
happy with losing.
The obesity problem facing the UK is particularly bad in Scotland.
Here almost two-thirds of adults are overweight and more than one in four is
classed as obese. Now though some are finding that a visit to their favorite
football club can help. This innovative scheme is called football fans in training.
Here at Rangers in Glasgow those taking part
attend weekly sessions of physical activity and receive diet advice.
It's backed by the NIHR the research arm of the NHS.
And for many the results are life changing.
I've had to buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes, literally everything there was an empty wardrobe
I took about a dozen bags to the charity shop.
I've been coming here since I was a school boy with my grandfather
sitting up the stairs there, and for me to come in here twice a week and walk down the
same tunnel and change in the same changing rooms as Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff
Thats a big big thing, a big motivation.
I started off I was just under 26 stone, I lost five stone I've still got five to go but i'm getting there.
NIHR funded research shows those taking part in a program lost nine times as
much weight as those who didn't. As a result schemes like this have been rolled
out at many more leading football clubs.
The modest thing about the NIHR and it's Public Health Research program is that it enables really really
first-class research to be conducted.
We were able to do a full-scale randomised controlled trial to
properly evaluate whether or not the
program that we developed football fans in training was able to not only help
men lose weight in the short term but we could follow them up
a full year later to see whether or not they managed to sustain that weight loss.
I sat down with professor Dame Sally Davies chief medical officer at the
Department of Health she explained the role of the NIHR in generating and
producing scientific evidence to find the best ways of preventing and treating ill health.
The National Institute of Health Research the NIHR is really the
research arm of the NHS but we reach into public health in local authorities as well
and what we're trying to do is develop the evidence-based policy and
practice on and to make it easy to do studies. Clearly we have three big areas one in the lifestyle
issues and you can start with smoking which causes most deaths but obesity
and the obesogenic environment, alcohol, the lifestyle issues, lack of physical
activity, then there's Health Protection generally from infections thinking about
pandemic flu but actually ebola issues like that or food poisoning and then of course
there's mental health issues too.
In addition to public health NIHR funding can cover research into safety
issues where there's a potential health outcome a recent example to hit the
headlines is the study which showed reduced street lighting in England and
Wales is not associated with road traffic collisions or crime. Suggesting
local authorities can make savings by dimming street lights at night.
It's vital to have independent research into this type of thing
local authorities are under immense pressure with budget
constraints and it's good to understand if the strategies employed by the local
authorities are actually achieving the right outcomes.
Local authorities have a responsibility for public health at a local level and have a budget to deliver
services for public health and of course they need to make difficult decisions
about how to spend that budget wisely. So the research evidence can help them
to prioritise and decide which interventions to commission.
From helping local councils on their budgeting decisions to reducing waste lines in
some of the most overweight areas of the country NIHR research is getting the
public involved in changing priorities and changing lives.