Bradford Council, Born in Bradford and the Bradford Council for Mosques have formed a unique partnership to explore the opportunities for working with Islamic Religious Settings, in particular Madrassas to tackle childhood obesity by supporting healthier behaviours and influencing positive social and structural change for better health in the local environment.
Bradford Council, Born in Bradford and the Bradford Council for Mosques have formed a unique partnership to explore the opportunities for working with Islamic Religious Settings, in particular Madrassas to tackle childhood obesity by supporting healthier behaviours and influencing positive social and structural change for better health in the local environment.
Progress
- Development of the trailblazer toolkit for Islamic Religious Settings leaders and volunteers
- Stakeholder feedback on toolkit quality control and accuracy has been incorporated
- Born in Bradford has started administering a progress monitoring tool ‘balance score card’ to capture overall learning of implementing hyperlocal obesity prevention plans by each place-based group
- Continuing to build capacity of IRS as organisations to deliver their own localised obesity prevention interventions
- Finalising plans for Bradford Public Health teams to support sustainability and growth of the COTP programme over the next two years
- Sir professor Chris Witty visited Bradford and a selection of IRS and Madrassas and members of place- based groups who discussed their experiences of working in partnership with the trailblazer programme and the programme’s work was showcased and highlighted. Local media outlets publicised Professor Whitty’s visit
Challenges
- Future funding opportunities to support community embedded experts to deliver trailblazer activities
- Clarity on where support can be achieved and what resources are available
- Ongoing impact of Covid on place-based groups; low number of volunteers and high levels of Covid fatalities.
- Learnings:
- Following the introduction of healthy behaviours, children drank less fizzy drinks, attention span in class increased and the 3-day residential in nature was a success. Building trust between organisations has made this possible.
- -Faith in Communities has been instrumental in linking the Bradford Trailblazer with volunteers and teachers in religious settings
Next steps
- Organise the third behaviour change workshop training for the trailblazer team and IRS leaders
- Bradford Council to organise final toolkit quality and accuracy workshop
- Continue to involve place-based groups in test and learn sessions for toolkit content delivery
- Ensure robust quality assurance of the contents of the toolkit
- Bradford Council to complete the administrative processes for the Born in Bradford funding proposal submitted to start the implementation of the initiative