Solutions Focused Thinking in Population Health

My last blog focused on how we can think about solutions instead of problems in the NHS. Well the same is true in thinking about the health of our whole population. Yes there are some problems! We have growing health concerns with obesity and diabetes. We imageshave huge health inequalities. There are major issues with housing, economic policies that are not working for huge swathes of our population, with more people having to use food banks, struggling with fuel poverty, living in damp houses and unable to make ends meet. Yes, our kids are spending more time on screens and less time in activity. Yes, the sugar lobby, alcohol lobby and advertising giants have far too much power. Supermarkets are designed deliberately so that we buy things that are bad for us. And sometimes, we just make poor choices (if you can call them choices, which for some people, they aren’t always) – we do not all live as healthily as we could – we eat the wrong stuff, work highly stressful jobs, and exercise less than we are recommended to. Mental health issues are on the rise, especially for teenagers, due to crazy targets and league tables, with all the pressures they face. We are less happy and more separated than we ever used to be, despite the rise in social media…..(or maybe because of it……)…..Man, I can paint a negative picture – it’s like storm clouds and darkness everywhere……..

 

imagesBut what if it wasn’t that way? What if we got a bit angry about it, but instead of finding someone to blame and pointing the finger; instead of getting all tribal and throwing stones at others, we chose to use our energies creatively to find solutions, to work together and make positive changes?! Let’s put away our pointing fingers and our ranting tongues and let’s work together for a better future for everyone! Doesn’t that sound good?! It’s what we’re trying here in Morecambe Bay, and I’m hoping it spreads like wild fire so that we can become a place where health abounds and beauty surrounds (that’s the motto of this place!). That doesn’t mean we stop speaking truth to power, but we also let our actions (and maybe our votes) speak louder than ever before.

 

imgresWe’re talking together, taking time to dream about what it would be like if we were the healthiest area in the UK. We’re training up many people to host conversations, so that we break down walls and learn to collaborate for the sake of everyone. We’re not just dreaming about physical health, but mental, social and systemic health as well. We’re encouraging those who want to rise up and take some leadership, to be pioneers in the stuff they are passionate about. Even in my little town, we now have a mental health cafe that is literally saving people’s lives, because a lady called Jane wanted to make a difference. We have a cafe for all the people who have circulation problems because one of our nurses wanted to break people’s isolation and improve their healing rates at the same time. imagesWe’ve got a carers cafe, a dementia cafe and will soon have a breathing cafe for those who have severe COPD, sharing ideas and diminishing anxiety. We’ve got exercise classes to help with pain, a community choir, dog poo wardens to help us take more pride when we walk down the street and food banks to help those who can no longer afford to eat.

 

image[1]We have 2000 kids aged 4-11 running a mile a day at school with staggering results for our children here in terms of physical, mental and educational health. We’re hoping over time, this becomes the Morecambe Bay Mile, part of a cultural shift towards being more active. We are working with local chefs and supermarkets to enable people with pre-diabetes or weight struggles to eat more healthily.  We’re choosing to lead by example in the NHS to work well and flourish in our work places. We’ve made a commitment to see the 5 ways to wellbeing in every NHS organisation and we’re hoping many other systems and businesses will follow us in this. We’re finding radical ways to help people who are struggling with alcohol and drug addiction, get free and stay free with amazing results. We’re helping people live well with and beyond cancer.015c74b06779fe8d8496d585fb9865ea We’re changing the way consultations happen in the NHS to enable people to make more informed and better choices about their own health and conditions, so they feel empowered to make changes that work for them rather than beaten up when they go for an appointment! We’re launching the Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth challenge, learning from those who are lived NAWIFUexperts in poverty to help us work together and care better for those most struggling in our society. We’re having difficult conversations about death to help people be prepared for every eventuality.

 

All of this has started in the last year! What else might be possible? What other dreamsimages will be awakened? What other partnerships, collaborations and relationships might be formed? Being all tribal and accusatory of others saps our energy and stops us being creative. Mud slinging and blame will achieve little. We have to work from where we are. We have to build bridges and work together. We have to build a future of positive peace and that means binary thinking is over! The future doesn’t have to be full of doom and gloom. It is alive with hope! What resources might  we find? What talents might we discover? What might we see develop over the next 12 months/years/decades as we look for solutions together for a better future for everybody? Don’t you feel just a little bit excited?

 

 

Share This:

Share

How Well Are You?

I have the joy of leading some health and well-being retreats with a good friend of mine, who is a life coach. The retreats look at the idea of alignment. Human beings are unique and beautiful, incredibly intricate and are made up of layers, like an onion. Some of those layers are individual and some are corporate, because no person is an island. At the core of who you are is your spirit, your unique self. Then there is your soul – that sweet mixture of emotions, thoughts, ideas, hopes, longings, memories, hurts, resentments, desires, etc. All of that is encased in a physical body, with all the complexities that the intertwining systems entail. And these 3 parts of you are constantly interacting and affecting one anoiuther. For example, physical pain caused to you by another person, may cause you to feel emotionally hurt also (soul pain) and crush your spirit. Or indeed, as I see many times in my work, emotional pain leads to a resentment, which causes a bitterness which manifests itself in a physical pain and so too your spirit is negatively affected.

But you do not just float around in a bubble. You exist in a corporate body, in a family, group of friends and community. You live in an environment of some sort, and your surroundings have an incredible amount of ability to affect your health and well-being. This is evidenced in the effect of air pollution on respiratory disease or the effect of isolation or indeed bullying on mental health. We are all aware of the sights, sounds, smells and stressors in our physical geographies. Added to this corporate body is our corporate soul. And in the corporate soul we find corporate memories, ideas and beliefs, fears and dreams, things we have been taught, world views that shape us and all of this feeds into our meta-narratives, the stories with which we align our lives, that give us some sort of meaning. Surrounding all of this? The corporate spirit. Love. God is Love, not fear, or hatred or violence or bigotry or judgment, but Love. We find time and again in our own lives and in the lives of those who come on retreat the misalignment/disalignment/nonalignment that happens so easily, not necessarily through anyone’s fault, but because life is so complex.

 

It’s not as simple as tweaking one thing and then everything falls into place. Many of us still have to live with chronic and enduring illness of various sorts, be that mental or physical and achieving images“perfect health” may not be possible. But alignment is possible and it is this that gives us a sense of well-being. So, how well are you? Do you know how much you are influenced by the corporate body and soul? What are your meta-narratives? How aligned are you? There are things we cannot change, but we can chose how we respond to them and the choices we make within them. I want to unpack this a bit more in subsequent posts, but this might just kick off some musings.

Share This:

Share

Well Cities and How They Can Flourish

Tweet I am someone who has many dreams – I mean the night kind of dreams….very seldom would they be a night mare, but they come with incredible detail! Maybe this is because my mind is processing, maybe it’s because I’m a bit weird or maybe it’s because I’m finally quiet and the Spirit of [Continue Reading …]

Share