Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:35 pm on 7 February 2017.
Thank you for those comments. I recognise your consistent interest in the area of diet, health, and exercise. It’s not just around diabetes, as many of the risk factors we talk about in diabetes are risk factors in a range of other conditions, including heart disease and heart conditions as well.
We recognise the significant impact that diet and exercise have in a whole range of conditions, and I too recognise the work that Food Cardiff are doing on reaching a number of people. But when I describe the cardiovascular risk assessment programme, that is deliberately reaching into people who don’t engage in normal services. That’s the success that we’ve seen in Cwm Taf and in Aneurin Bevan, and I expect we’ll see more success in the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg area as well.
And so we expect the programme to be rolled out successfully, to reach out into those people who don’t engage in their own healthcare choices now, despite all of the evidence that exists. There is a whole range of things, but probably the Caerphilly study is still the thing that tells us about the long-term impact of making different health choices. And so that’s why the programme is being rolled out, because it goes to those people where we recognise there are socioeconomic inequalities and we recognise they are unlikely to engage in those wider public health messages, wherever they are. I think it’s really important we use school as a real lever—particularly primary school, where parents are more likely to be engaged. But I recognise that, even at primary school, it’s still more likely to be women who engage in and around the school.
And with the success that we’ve seen, we’re actually seeing varying rates, between 50 per cent and 70 per cent, of engagement with the cardiovascular risk programmes in Cwm Taf and Aneurin Bevan. That’s a significant improvement; a significant engagement of people who wouldn’t otherwise be there. That’s why—I’ve emphasised it in the statement—you’ll see more of that taking place right across the country.
And in all of these things, we need to understand why these have been successful. And it’s not just a model of healthcare support workers working in different settings—but it’s whether it’s still going to work as successfully as it’s rolled out. I’m confident it should work in almost all of our settings, actually, but, again, we always need to take a step back and learn: is it still the right approach, is there more that we can do, and how does it tie up with our other interventions, and other work right across the Government? So it’s not just health in all policies, but it’s all policies in health as well, and how we see that delivered right across the span of Government and our partners.