Category: Individual Health

Health and Society

Every year I get to give a guest lecture at UCLAN medical school on health and society. Here is my lecture from this year – always a moving feast and next year it will be different. It’s about an hour long, so makes good as a podcast, if you’re interested! Mainly aimed at doctors in training, but I hope is interesting for all! I cover the wider issues like: why we’re currently losing, social determinants of health, poverty, choice and responsiblity, social movement, new power, humility, kindness and various other things! UCLAN is a new medical school and I love their approach to teaching. You’ll need to copy and paste the link below into a new browser to hear the lecture and view the slides.

 

https://vls.uclan.ac.uk/Play/34633

 

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A Fallow Year

This coming year of 2019, I am letting my garden have a rest – letting the ground be fallow. It gives space for the soil to replenish and to have its nutrients restored.

 

I am personally trying to allow much more space this year for contemplation, silence, reflection and the deeper work of stillness. I’ve sown a lot of seed over the last few years and now I need to take stock and see what is emerging, what is growing, what has life. There will probably be fewer blogs, though not necessarily, as I may use it to journal. There will definitely be less social media (starting with a complete 6 week hike from it form January 1st). I am so aware how often we focus on the activity, but do not do the deeper work needed in our lives.

 

As a Type 7 on the Enneagram, I know I can easily run away from pain – I am learning much more to sit with it. I know I can easily return to gluttony – not just for food, but for anything – new ideas, an idealised future, dreams, experiences……. I know that my natural defence mechanism is to rationalise everything, so that I don’t have to deal with the complexity of ‘feeling’ it! I know that I can so easily fill my time with so many fun and exciting adventures, always looking to the next possibility rather than sitting in the present and just being. Although, in many ways I feel more healed and more whole than ever, I am painfully aware how easily, I trap myself back in my ‘7 prison of escapist behaviours’ rather than living out my life more fully and freely, in the deep knowledge of being unconditionally loved.

 

I have personally found the enneagram such a useful tool, not to box me in, but to help me understand the box I am already living in and how to be free of it to become the best version of Andrew James Knox that I can be. I would say, in my clinics and in my leadership work in the NHS, that my greatest sadness is seeing people who never really do their ‘deep work’. They never really get to grips with their root issues, never really face up to their deep needs and resultant behaviours which leads to all kinds dis-ease. In fact, the world is run by such people and the effects for all of us and the planet, are devastating. If we are to embrace a kinder future, in which empathy, love and compassion can really come to the fore, then we have to be willing to do our deep work ourselves (from which no one is exempt), letting go of our anger, pride, deceit, envy, greed, fear, gluttony, lust or sloth in the process.

 

So.……what’s the deep work you need to do in 2019?

 

This year, my deep work is to embrace contemplation, to pause and reflect, to listen and to be present. I hope I learn more the secret of doing nothing. The Christopher Robbin Movie has given me much cause for thought (not least about inverted pyramids!).

 

After all, as one of my all time favourites, Winnie-the Pooh, reminds us:

“Doing Nothing Often Leads to The Very Best Something.”

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Cuts and More Cuts – a Disaster for our Population’s Health and Wellbeing

It amazes me, in this 24-hour news world that we live in, that a further £1 BILLION of cuts to our county councils doesn’t remain on the BBC front page until much past lunchtime! It feels a bit more important than some of the stories being picked by the editorial team instead!

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45573921

 

Anyhow….these cuts will be utterly devastating for our population’s health and wellbeing and the “extra funding” for the NHS is simply not going to be enough to undo the damage. Local government will have lost 60% of it’s budget by 2020, with devastating consequences and no amount of local taxation will replace the difference, especially in poorer areas of the country. And just look at what will be cut:

 

  • 58% of councils said highways and transport (including road improvements, streetlights, pothole filling)
  • 47% said libraries
  • 45% said early years and youth clubs.
  • 44% ear-marked public health services like smoking cessation, sexual health, substance misuse
  • 36% said children’s services.

 

 

So:

  1.  We will have far higher risk of road traffic accidents, especially for cyclists/motorcyclists (I’ve seen the effect of people hitting potholes and fracturing their spine).
  2. there will be less access to shops and leisure facilities for our poorest communities, meaning a worsening of the obesity epidemic.
  3. We will have increased social isolation and reduced learning opportunities for our elderly (therefore increasing risk of dementia and depression).
  4. We will have decreased social support for our young people, leaving them far more vulnerable to gangs and substance misuse.
  5. We will have less support for young families, struggling to cope and so less opportunity for parental support and an increase in Adverse Childhood Experiences – with devastating long term consequences for physical and mental health.
  6. Smoking continues to affect 1 in 5 people in a hospital bed, and is still the biggest cause of death in many parts of the country – yep good idea to cut that.
  7. Our drug crisis is rising exponentially, and we’re seeing an increase in STIs and yet councils will not be able to provide services to help.
  8. Children’s services, those vital safety nets that work to prevent serious safeguarding incidents will have to be reduced also!

 

WHAT?!

 

There isn’t a council in the country that wants to make these cuts and the lack of foresight by the government to drive these further cuts through when the ones we’ve had already have been so deep, is utterly ludicrous. I’ve sat with council officers in tears over the choices they are having to make – these are people who love the communities they serve and are trying to do as much damage limitation as possible, whilst being left to take the blame.

 

What does it tell us? It tells us a few things. Firstly, there is a serious lack of joined up thinking about the long term consequences of these cuts. Save money now, but pay for it 5-fold in the future. Secondly, there is a genuine lack of concern for the poorer communities in our country. Thirdly, our current political model is broken and more than ever we need a politics of love/compassion. Fourthly, our current economic model is caput and cannot give us the regenerative and distributive future we need for humanity and the planet. I feel so despairing, sad and am grieving what this is going to mean for so many of our communities. We need to feel this pain and face up to this and find hope in reimagining how we might do things radically but necessarily differently.  This piece in the Guardian is worthy of serious reflection:

 

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/16/the-eu-needs-a-stability-and-wellbeing-pact-not-more-growth?__twitter_impression=true

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Let The Children Play!

In The Guardian today, there is an article in which the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, is calling for more adventure playgrounds across the country, especially in our ‘poorer’ neighbourhoods. She believes we need more play schemes across the country for the long summer holidays which she argues are having a profoundly negative effect on children’s physical and mental health. Most starkly, she cites a study in which “primary school children lost 80% of the fitness levels gained during term time. The poorest 25% experienced a drop in fitness levels 18 times greater than the richest 25%”. Sadly, this undoes some of the great work of schemes like ‘the daily mile’ in schools and has hugely negative consequences in terms of future health risks.

 

I would personally therefore welcome such a move – it is absolutely the case that increased active play and exercise improves a child’s physical, mental and social health. There is no doubt that more facilities, especially located closer to home would be better than having none at all….but I don’t really think it’s quite that simple (and for the record, I don’t think Anne Longfield thinks it is that simple either, she is a great champion for children across the UK). There is a danger, that by saying children need to play more, that it gets oversimplified by policy makers and could perhaps sound a little too Marie Antoinette! Yes our long summer breaks are becoming like ‘battery hen’ experiences for many children across the UK, but simply building them more parks is not going to change this, and I can give you few reasons why.  To understand why kids are spending more time indoors and on screens, we need to dig a little deeper into some pretty uncomfortable truths and wrestle with the complexity of them.

 

I have a friend, who is one of the kindest and best people I know. On top of his very heavy work schedule, he invests an enormous amount of time into young people, who are often living with really challenging circumstances. Every summer, he runs activities for them, right through the summer break and does extraordinary things. Ten years ago, when he applied for funding through a variety of grants (and let me tell you he is a seasoned wizard at winning bids for such things) he was getting £20k for a packed out summer programme. These days, he struggles to raise £4k. That leaves the situation in which he is having to ask families to contribute more for the care of their kids over the summer. What this leads to is a drop in numbers and more kids stuck in at home.

 

I have another friend, who runs a school in one of our most deprived communities. Throughout the summer break, her school opens up to ensure the kids from the locality do not go hungry and so that families can afford to eat. There have been emergency appeals from many food banks this year. Many working families are seriously struggling to provide both childcare, through the long summer breaks and food….there are some really tough choices to be made. Out of 50 young people on a local holiday scheme, that I know of, 19 of them were relying on daily food parcels, meaning they have no idea from one day to the next what they will be eating and actually no choice about it. When you are working two jobs and struggling to make ends meet, what else can you do with you kids? Just let them roam the streets?

 

I know a police officer who works on some of the toughest estates in the UK. He tells me that the war on drugs has utterly failed and the gangs are absolutely running the show. Cuts to the policing budget and massive stress levels in the force, as a result, are seeing whole neighbourhoods overrun with crime. The play parks in these places are totally unsafe. No parent in their right mind would let their child out to play in such an environment. It’s a bit different in leafy Surrey or middle class suburbiaville. Without police to build relationships with young people and keep the streets safe, simply building new parks or putting on play schemes will not be enough. Without children’s centres, youth centres and health facilities readily available (many of which have been closed or privatised and so less affordable to communities who need them most), there are less places to go.

 

If I’ve learnt anything over the last few years, it is that we have to stop coming up with schemes that we think are good for communities and simply delivering them. We have to really learn to listen to people’s stories and the complexities of their situations and from that place hear what it is that they want and need and then create real partnerships to bring about that change together. Hilary Cottam is all over this in her brilliant book ‘Radical Help’, which is a must read.

 

I love that Anne Longfield, Tanni Grey-Thompson and Sarah Woolaston see this whole issue as being so massively important. Play schemes and parks and cutting sugar (though all excellent) will simply not be enough in and of themselves to get kids out doors and playing in them. We need a a very holistic approach which starts with communities, hearing what their dreams are for their kids and hearing the hopes and desires of the kids themselves. Next we need to understanding what the steps will be to get there. Then we have to build that together. I would suggest a great place to steward this kind of resource would be through health and wellbeing partnerships, like the ones we have in Morecambe Bay. Cross public and voluntary sector partnerships, rooted and working well in their local communities. But I can also guarantee, that this idea will require the right kind of resource – appropriate funding of the required schemes, affordable access to facilities, work that pays a decent wage so families can afford to eat and taking the safety of our streets seriously. That is going to take both a reimagining of youth work/social provision and appropriate help and resource to a diminished and struggling police force. Bring on the parks, but first listen and make sure they can be used!

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Health and Society – Part 3 – Can We Make a Difference?

On the 70th Birthday of the NHS, here is the 3rd and final part of this mini-vlog-series. In this one I look at how we can make some positive steps for our own health and wellbeing and explore the issues of choice and responsibility, whilst we also tackle health inequality and issues of social justice.

 

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Changing the Future of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Applying a Population Health Approach to Adverse Childhood Experiences

 

Adverse Childhood Experiences are one of our most important Population Health issues due to their long lasting impact on the physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing of a person and indeed the wider community. It is therefore really important that we apply a ‘population health’ approach in our thinking about them so that we can begin to transform the future together. This is an area of great complexity with several contributing factors and will take significant partnership across all levels of government, public bodies, organisations and communities to bring about a lasting change. There are things we can do immediately and things that will take longer, but with a growing awareness of just what a significant impact ACEs are having on our society, we must act together to do something now. Here in Morecambe Bay, we have developed a way of thinking about Population Health in what we call our ‘Pentagon Approach’. It can be applied to ACEs as a helpful framework for thinking about how we begin to turn this tide and cut out this cancer from our society and feeds into the already great work being done across Lancashire and South Cumbria, lead by Dr Arif Rajpura and Dr Helen Lowey, who have spearheaded so much!

 

Prevent

 

When we examine the list of things that pertain to ACEs (see previous https://reimagininghealth.com/facing-our-past-finding-a-better-future/ blog), it is easy to feel overwhelmed and put it into the ‘too hard to do’ box. This is no longer an option for us. We must begin to think radically at a societal level about how we prevent ACEs from happening in the first place (recognising that some ACEs are more possible to prevent than others). Prevention will entail a mixture of community grass-roots initiatives, changes in policy and a re-prioritisation of commissioning decisions for us to make a difference together. Here are some practical suggestions:

 

  • The first step is most certainly to break down the taboo of the subject and continue to raise awareness of just how common ACEs are and how utterly devastating they are for human flourishing. ACE aware training is therefore vital as part of all statutory safeguarding training.
  • We have to tackle health inequality and inequality in our society. ACEs, although common across the social spectrum are more common in areas of poverty. Although we now have more people in work, many people are not being paid a living wage, work settings are not necessarily healthy and child poverty has actually increased over the last 5 years in our most deprived areas https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/poverty-taking-hold-families-what-can-we-do.
  • Parenting Classes should be introduced at High School in Personal and Social Education Classes to help the next generation think about what it would mean to be a good parent. These should also form an important part of antenatal and post-natal care, with further classes available in the community for each stage of a child’s development. Extra support is needed for the parents of children with special developmental or educational needs due to the increased stress levels involved.
  • There needs to be a particular focus on fatherhood and encouraging young men to think about what it means to father children. Recent papers have demonstrated just how important the role of a father can be (positive or negative) in a child’s life and it is not acceptable for the parenting role to fall solely to the mother. www.eani.org.uk/_resources/assets/attachment/full/0/55028.pdf
  • We have much to learn from the ‘recovery community’ about how to work effectively with families caught in cycles of addiction from alcohol or drugs. Finding a more positive approach to keeping families together whilst helping those caught in addictive behaviour to take responsibility for their parenting or learn more positive styles of parenting, whilst helping to build support and resilience for the children involved is really important.
  • We must ensure that our social services are adequately funded and that there is continuity and consistency in the people working with any given family, especially around the area of mental health. Relationships are absolutely key in bringing supportive change and we must breathe this back into our welfare state.
  • Hilary Cottam writes powerfully in her book, Radical Help that we must foster the capabilities of local communities, making local connections and “above all, relationships”. As Cottam states, “The welfare state is incapable of ‘fixing’ this, but it has an important role to play. It can catch us when we fall, but it cannot give us flight.
  • Sex education in schools needs to be more open and honest about the realities of paedophilia and developing sexual desire. Elizabeth Letourneau argues powerfully that paedophilia is preventable not inevitable. We must break open this taboo and start talking to our teenagers about it. (https://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=620399&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss)

 

Detect

 

If we want to make a real difference to ACEs and their impact on society, we need to be willing to talk about them. We can’t detect something we’re not looking for. Therefore as our awareness levels rise of the pandemic reality of ACEs, we need to develop ways of asking questions that will enable children or people to ‘tell their story’ and uncover things which may be happening to them or may have happened to them which may be deeply painful, or of which they may have memories which are difficult to access. Again, our approach needs to be multi-level across many areas of expertise. We need to be willing to think the unthinkable and create environments in which children can talk about their reality. For children in particular, this may need to involve the use of play or art therapy.

 

  • Whole school culture change is vital, with a high level of prioritisation from the school leadership team is needed to ensure this becomes everybody’s business.
  • School teachers and teaching assistants need to be given specific training, as part of their ‘safeguarding’ development about how to recognise when a child may be experiencing an ACE and how to enable them to talk about it in a non-coercive, non-judgmental way.
  • Police and social services need training in recognising the signs of ACEs in any home they go into. For example, in the case of a drug-related death, how much consideration is currently given to the children of the family involved, and how much information is shared with the child’s school so that a proactive, pastoral approach can be taken. There are good examples around England where this is now beginning to happen. (http://www.eelga.gov.uk/documents/conferences/2017/20%20march%202017%20safer%20communities/barbara_paterson_ppt.pdf)

 

For adults, we need to recognise where ACEs might have played a part in a person’s physical or mental health condition (remember the stark statistics in the previous blog on this subject). Therefore we need to develop tools and techniques to help people open up about their story and perhaps for clinicians to learn how to take a ‘trauma history’.

 

  • Clinical staff working in healthcare need to be given REACh training (routine enquiry about adverse childhood experiences – Prof Warren Larkin) as part of their ongoing Continuous Professional Development (CPD). In busy clinics it is easier to focus on the symptoms a person has, rather than do a deeper dive into what might be the cause of the symptoms being experienced. A wise man once said to me, “You have to deal with the root and not the fruit”. Learning to ask open questions like “tell me a bit about what has happened to you” rather than “what is wrong with you”, can open up the opportunity for people to share difficult things about their childhood, which may be profoundly affecting their physical or mental health well into adulthood. There is a concern that opening up such a conversation might lead to much more work on the part of the clinician, but studies have shown that simply by giving someone space to talk about ACEs they have experienced, they will subsequently reduce their use of GPs by over 30% and their use of the ED by 11%.
  • We can ask each other. This issue is too far reaching to be left to professionals. If simply by talking about our past experiences, we can realise that we are not alone, we are not freaks and we do not have to become ‘abusers’ ourselves, then we can learn to help to heal one another in society. Caring enough to have a cup of tea with a friend and really learn about each other’s life story can be an utterly healing and transformational experience. When we are listened to by someone with kind and fascinated, compassionate eye, we can find incredible healing and restoration. One very helpful process, ned by the ‘more to life’ team is about processing life-shocks. Sophie Sabbage has written a really helpful book on this, called ‘Lifeshocks’).

 

Protect

 

When a child is caught in a situation in which they are experiencing one or more ACE, we must be vigilant and act on their behalf to intervene and bring them and their family help. When an adult has disclosed that they have been through one or more ACE as a child, we must enable them to be able to process this and not let them feel any sense of shame or judgement.

 

  • We need to ensure school teachers are more naturally prone to thinking that ‘naughty’ or ‘difficult’ children are actually highly likely to be in a state of hyper vigilance due to stressful things they are experiencing at home. Expecting them to ‘focus, behave and get on with it’, is not only unrealistic, it’s actually unkind. Equally, children who are incredibly shy and easily go unnoticed must not be ignored. Simply recognising that kids might be having a really hard time, giving them space to talk about it with someone skilled, teaching them some resilience and finding a way to work with their parents/carers via the school nurse/social worker could make a lifetime of difference. It is far more important that our kids leave school knowing they are loved, with a real sense of self-esteem and belonging than with good SATS scores or GCSEs. The academic stuff can come later if necessary and we need to get far better at accepting this. A child’s health and wellbeing carries far more importance than any academic outcomes and Ofsted needs to find a way to recognise this officially. In other words, we need to create compassionate schools and try to ensure that school itself does not become an adverse childhood experience for those already living in the midst of trauma.
  • In North Lancashire, we have created a hub and spoke model to enable schools to be supportive to one another and offer advice when complex safeguarding issues are arising. So, when a teacher knows that they need to get a child some help, they can access timely advice with a real sense of support as they act to ensure a child is safe. These hubs and spokes need to be properly connected to a multidisciplinary team, who can help them act in accordance with best safeguarding practice. This MDT needs to incorporate the police, social services, the local health centre (for whichever member of staff is most appropriate) and the child and adolescent mental health team.
  • For adults who disclose that they have experienced an ACE, appropriate initial follow up should be offered and a suicide risk assessment should be carried out.

 

Manage

 

For children/Young People, the management will depend on the age of the child and must be tailored according to a) the level of risk involved and b) the needs of the child/young person involved. Some of the options include:

 

  • In severe cases the child/YP must be removed from the dangerous situation and brought under the care of the state, until it is clear who would be the best person to look after the child/YP
  • Adopting the whole family into a fostering scenario, to help the parents learn appropriate skills whilst keeping the family together, where possible.
  • EmBRACE (Sue Irwin) training for safeguarding leads and head teachers in each school, enabling children/YP to learn emotional resilience in the context of difficult circumstances.
  • Art/play therapy to enable the child to process the difficulties they have been facing.

 

For adults who disclose that they have experienced ACEs, many will find that simply by talking about them, they are able to process the trauma and find significant healing in this process alone. However, some will need more help, depending on the physical or mental health sequelae of the trauma experienced. Thus may include:

 

  • Psychological support in dealing with the physical symptoms of trauma
  • Targeted psychological therapies, e.g. CBT or EMDR to help with the consequences of things like PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
  • Medication to help alleviate what can be debilitating symptoms, e.g. anti-depressants
  • Targeted lifestyle changes around relaxation, sleep, eating well and being active
  • Help with any addictive behaviours, e.g. alcohol, drugs, pornography, food

 

Recover

 

Again, this will follow on from whatever management is needed in the ‘healing phase’ to enable more long term recovery. There are many things which may be needed, especially as the process of recovery is not always straightforward. These may include:

 

  • The 12 step programme, or something similar in walking free from any addiction.
  • Revisiting psychological or other therapeutic support
  • Walking through a process of forgiveness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ-j7NuhDEY&list=PLEWM0B0r7I-BXq6_wO4sL0qIwzTWwn_vx&index=9&t=0s, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtexaUCBl5k&list=PLEWM0B0r7I-BXq6_wO4sL0qIwzTWwn_vx&index=9)
  • We may need to help children go through development phases, which they have missed, at a later stage than usual, e.g. some children will need much more holding, cuddling and eye contact if they have been victims of significant neglect.
  • Compassionate school environments to help children and young people catch-up on any work missed, in a way they can cope with and reintegrate into the classroom setting where possible, but with head teacher discretion around sitting exams.

 

To complete the cycle, those who have walked through a journey of recovery are then able, if they would like to, to help others and form part of the growing network of people involved in this holistic approach to how we tackle ACEs in our society.

 

Hopefully this is a helpful framework to think as widely and holistically as possible. There is much great work going on around ACEs now and we must develop a community of learning and practice as we look to transform society together. We can’t do this alone, but together we can!

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Mental Health Help

Here is a series of 5 videos I did for Mental Health Awareness Week this year. Mental health is SO important and struggling with mental health issues, is NOTHING to be ashamed of. These videos cover, depression, anxiety, exam stress, suicide and getting to the roots of stress. There has been really positive response through Facebook, so here they are all in one place through my YouTube Channel.

 

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Population Health – The Pentagon Approach

Here in Morecambe Bay, thanks especially to the excellent work of Marie Spencer, David Walker, Jane Mathieson, Hannah Maiden and Jacqui Thompson, we have together developed a way of thinking about population health, which we call the ‘Pentagon Approach’. It draws on learning over a number of years from Public Health England and the World Health Organisation, and synergises nicely with the vision and approach of our excellent Directors of Public Health in Lancashire and Cumbria. It forms part of our overall population health strategy, which I want to give some focus to over a few short blogs. In this blog I will focus on the Pentagon and what we mean by each bit of it!

 

 

 

Population health means different things to different organisations, groups and individuals. However there is agreement that population health is determined by a complex range of interacting factors e.g. social and economic, lifestyle, access to services, including health, as well as our genes, age and sex.

Most of these factors lie outside of the health care system but have significant impact on individual and population health. Lord Darzi recently wrote in the 2016 WISH report (https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/healthy-populations) that we have talked about making a difference to population health for decades, but no-one has really grasped the nettle to make the changes we need to see, particularly around health inequalities. Responsibility for addressing these issues are fragmented. Therefore we need to ensure that we work with a multitude of partners to:

  • Understand the problem and set clear goals for improvement
  • Focus on the determinants of health and not just health care
  • Generate shared accountability
  • Empower people and communities and develop their capabilities
  • Embed health equity as a core element.

Therefore Population Health in Morecambe Bay is defined as:

“The health outcomes of our citizens as a group, including the distribution of those outcomes across the geography of Morecambe Bay.”

In Morecambe Bay, we have developed a way of thinking about Population Health through the means of five key strands, namely – Prevent, Detect, Protect, Manage and Recover.

Various definitions currently exist around these words, but in Morecambe Bay, the definitions will be used as follows:

Prevention

Prevention means preventing disease or injury before it ever occurs. This is done through:

  • Working with communities and other partners to tackle the underlying social determinants of health (e.g. living and working conditions, social isolation, health literacy etc.)
  • Encourage the development of health in all policies
  • The promotion of positive behavioural choices which improve a person’s health and wellbeing (e.g. stop smoking, reduce alcohol, take regular exercise, eat healthily)
  • Preventing exposures to hazards that cause disease or injury (e.g. through hand hygiene, health and safety )
  • Increasing resistance to disease or injury, should exposure occur (e.g. immunisation programmes)

Prevention can be primary (before a diagnosis) or secondary (after a diagnosis), but always refers to creating an environment that supports healthy choices, lifestyle changes, rather than medical intervention.

Detection

Detection means early recognition that:

  • a person is developing increased risk factors which may predispose them to a more serious condition (e.g. obesity, rising cholesterol, high BP, low mood)
  • a person has developed a chronic condition, for which they will need further protection (e.g. COPD – chronic obstructive pulmonary diease, Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus)
  • a local population are more at risk of developing a particular condition/set of conditions (e.g. detection of childhood obesity rates, high rates of smoking, high rates of alcohol use, poor housing or air quality )
  • a local population has worse health outcomes than another, requiring appropriate resource allocation (e.g. poor cancer survival rates, high rates premature mortality, low access to preventative interventions)

Protection

Protection means:

  • to protect someone from developing a condition of which they are at risk, through medical intervention (e.g. starting antihypertensive medication) – this would also go hand in hand with some further prevention measures
  • to reduce the impact of a disease or injury that has already occurred (e.g. ensuring protection after a first MI of having a second MI through strict treatment of BP, cholesterol and kidney function, smoking and dietary advice)
  • to soften the impacts of an ongoing illness or injury that has lasting effects (e.g. helping a person to understand a chronic condition they are living with, through structured education and ensure best evidenced treatment, to help them live at optimal health)
  • to protect someone from developing a more serious condition, through surgical intervention (e.g. prophylactic bilateral mastectomy)

Management

Management means:

  • to provide appropriate advice, treatment or referral for a single episode of a health complaint (e.g. minor ailments )
  • to intervene at the time of a medical or surgical emergency with best evidence-based practice (e.g. transfer to a cardiology centre for management of a STEMI – [heart attack])
  • to treat an exacerbation of a chronic condition through a best evidence-based intervention (e.g. an acute exacerbation of COPD)

Recovery

Recovery means:

  • helping people manage long-term, often complex health problems and injuries in order to improve as much as possible their ability to function, their quality of life and their life expectancy (e.g. through cardiac/pulmonary rehabilitation, community integration, support groups, social care provision, vocational rehabilitation programmes, links to financial advice)
  • recognising where people will not recover and enable good palliative care and a good death

This Pentagon describes our ‘population health approach’, but is not the complete picture of how we think about population health. More on this in some follow up blogs and vlogs.

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Facing Our Past, Finding a Better Future – Adverse Childhood Experiences

This week I had the privilege of listening to Prof Warren Larkin, advisor to the Department of Health on Adverse Childhood Experiences. This is something I’ve written about on this blog before and Warren has made me more determined than ever to keep talking about this profoundly important issue. This blog draws on his wisdom and learning.

I believe that Adverse Childhood Experiences are our most important Public Health issue. So I want to be really clear about what they are, how and why they affect us so deeply, where we can find help if we’ve been affected by them and how together we can change the future, by preventing them.

 

What Are Adverse Childhood Experiences?

 

• Physical abuse
• Sexual Abuse
• Emotional Abuse
• Living with someone who abused drugs
• Living with someone who abused alcohol
• Exposure to domestic violence
• Living with someone who was incarcerated
• Living with someone with serious mental illness
• Parental loss through divorce, death or abandonment

 

How Common Are They?

 

The answer is – far too common. There have been some really wide ranging studies across the UK and USA into the numbers of us who have experienced ACEs, and it’s not just in our “most deprived communities” but in predominantly white, middle class areas where we see the stark statistics. Depending on the study you read, between 50 and 65% have experienced at least one ACE. And shockingly 1 in 10 of us have experienced more than 4.

 

How and Why Do They Effect Us?

 

Firstly, they affect us by quantity. The more ACEs we experience, the worse our physical, mental and social health and wellbeing is. If you have experienced one ACE, you have an 86% chance of being subject to several. If you experience more than 4, your health and wellbeing is significantly affected. If you experience more than 6 then you have a 46 times higher chance of becoming an IV drug abuser, a 35 times higher chance of committing suicide and an overall 20 year decrease in life expectancy.

 

Secondly, the toxic stress levels significantly change the way in which our brains grow and function. This has a profound impact on our day to day functioning. ACEs are a massive cause of absenteeism from work, high cost to the health and social care system and highly predictive of time behind bars. That is why so many of us have complex relationships with things like food. Losing weight, for example, is not as straight forward as eating less, exercising more or ending up with a gastric band. Did you know that suicide rates are massively increased after bariatric surgery? By removing the ability to eat, the very thing that takes away or comforts the pain, we expose the underlying issue, but provide no healing into that void.

 

Thirdly, our bodies literally keep the score of the negative experiences. So, we become more likely to develop chronic pain, inflammatory conditions, heart disease, cancer and mental health issues.

 

Fourthly, the toxic stress actually alters the way our DNA works and therefore changes the genetic information that we pass onto future generations. As an example, domestic violence in pregnancy is predictive of child developmental issues and offspring of the survivors of the holocaust or genocide are far more likely to develop chronic anxiety. This highlights just how important our family history really is.

 

Fifthly, there are proven things we can do a) to help our brains learn how to cope in the midst of really difficult circumstances (resilience) and b) therapeutic interventions that can genuinely heal us.

 

Where Can We Find Help?

 

Here’s the thing – this is where the rubber hits the road.

 

Many of us, who have experienced difficult things in childhood/adolescence never talk about them. Sometimes that’s because we can’t remember the experiences – they happen to us before our memories fully form. But perhaps more frequently we bury them because we don’t want to talk about the deeply painful memories, we don’t know how to or we’re worried about what might happen to us, or the people who caused us the pain if we do. And how do you start a conversation like that anyway? What? Are you going to just blurt it out to someone? And what on earth will you do if you just start crying in the middle of a restaurant when you talk to your girlfriend/boyfriend about what happened to you? And what about all those complicated associated feelings of shame, guilt, fear, thoughts of rejection? So…..we keep the lid on….even though it’s to our own detriment because we don’t know how to bring it into the open.

 

And here in lies the starting place. It’s vital that we learn this in the world of health and social care, but actually we all need to hear this incredible truth. Various studies have shown that it takes 9-16 years for people to be able to talk about trauma/abuse they experienced, but most never do. Fraser and Read found that in their patients struggling with mental health issues, only 8% of them volunteered that they had experienced ACEs. However, when they were actually asked about this, 82% then talked about ACEs they had experienced. So? So, we find it almost impossible to talk about, but when someone asks us about what we have lived through, it takes the lid off the box, peels the sticky plaster off the deep wound and allows us to begin talking about our pain. And here’s something really remarkable……Felitti and Andra found in a study of 140000 people that simply by routinely asking all patients about ACEs, they saw a 35% decrease in visits to the GP and an 11% reduction in use of the Emergency Department!

 

What does that mean? It means that giving someone the chance to talk about their journey, what they have been through, breaking the cycle of shame, fear and rejection is, in and of itself, deeply healing! Knowing that you’re not a freak, knowing that it wasn’t your fault, knowing that it doesn’t mean that you yourself will become an abuser/alcoholic/poor parent and many more realisations can make a significant difference to a person’s wellbeing. Maybe it doesn’t have to wait for a GP’s surgery or a counsellor’s chair. Maybe, just maybe if we all care enough to ask each other deeper and more caring questions we can help to heal each other. I know this is true of my own journey and that of many of my friends.

 

But let’s not be naive. For some of us, the experiences we have had are so horrific that we are stuck in a moment and we can’t get out of it. And this is where good therapy really comes in. I wonder if we invested more in therapy and less in drugs to numb our pain, how much more healed we might be – perhaps more expensive in the short term, but overall the cost is far less, both for the individual and society as a whole. There is help available and it can take many forms. EMDR, Trauma Focussed-CBT, Bereavement Counselling and even things like working through a forgiveness process. Unfortunately, many of the waiting lists are very long, and private options are way too expensive for most people to afford.

 

So, Can We Change The Future?

 

You know that I believe together we can! But it’s not going to be easy, especially not in the context of our floundering social services, restrictive school curriculums, reduction in numbers of health visitors and school nurses, eye watering cuts to public health budgets and significantly stretched CAMHS and Adult Mental Health Teams. And I think we have to very real and honest about that, because if this is such a massive issue in our society (and the data and evidence is astounding) then we need, as Warren Larkin so eloquently argues, genuine commitment from leaders and organisations to shift towards a culture of learning and collaboration to bring about change.

 

Here are some things we need to do together:

 

1) Own up to what a massive issue this is.

2) We need to learn how to ask our friends better questions and care enough to listen to each other’s experiences and journeys because it is really hard to know how to start talking about ACEs, but is more possible when someone bothers to ask!

3) We need to recognise that by bottling things up, we do further harm to ourselves. Perhaps some of our complex addictive patterns of behaviour, our mental health issues, our physical pain and symptoms might well be linked to the ACEs we have experienced. So maybe we don’t need a life on painkillers, cigarettes or with a complex addictive behaviour patterns. Maybe we can find a way to deeper healing.

4) In health and social care, we need to adopt REACh (routine enquiry about adversity in childhood) – we need to change the way we take histories from patients and ask better questions. Remember that even by asking, it doesn’t open up scary and messy consultations that we don’t have time for, actually it opens up a therapeutic space which can massively alter how a person goes on to use the health service in the future.

5) We need to ensure schools are more vigilant to thinking that ‘naughty’ or ‘difficult’ children are actually highly likely to be in a state of hyper vigilance due to stressful things they are experiencing at home. Expecting them to ‘focus, behave and get on with it’, is not only unrealistic, it’s actually unkind. Simply recognising that kids might be having a really hard time, giving them space to talk about it with someone skilled, teaching them some resilience and finding a way to work with their parents/carers via the school nurse/social worker could make a lifetime of difference. It is far more important that our kids leave school knowing they are loved, with a real sense of self-esteem and belonging than with good SATS scores or GCSEs. The academic stuff can come later if necessary and we need to get far better at accepting this.

6) Parenting classes should not just be for the well-motivated or struggling. They should be for all of us – a routine part of antenatal care and alongside our children’s education and include help in dealing with previous ACEs, so they are not repeated for the next generation. Prevention is possible. And that means we need to learn to be a whole lot less judgemental and a great deal more open, honest, vulnerable and restorative with each other. One of my best memories of growing up, was going to a “foster home” for families that my mum used to work with and seeing parents being given the chance to learn how to love their kids, rather than have them taken off them. I know sometimes there is no choice, but helping people learn how to be family and to love and cherish their children is a really beautiful thing. When there has been generational abuse, it is is also of the upmost importance. I’m not saying that a child should never be removed, but we can hardly say that our care system is a rip-roaring success story.

7) We need to find a way of working with men and women in our prisons that enables them to find a way to healing and restoration, not retribution for what are often extremely complex stories.

8) We must learn from best practice around the world. For example, did you know that the vast majority of paediphiles begin offending at the age of 14?! Most of them do not go on to become prolific offenders, but the damage caused to the child they abuse is obviously significant. There is some amazing work now going on in Pennsylvania which has shown that you can actually prevent young men from becoming offenders in the first place. Simply by doing some better sex education, explaining to boys about testosterone, the urges they are having and who it is appropriate to perform sexual acts with; alongside creating a really safe space where they can come and talk about feelings they are having (a bit like AA – with no ridicule or judgement) – data shows that you can decrease the incidence of child sexual abuse. We have to learn from this kind of approach and find a better way of talking about difficult issues. Prevention IS possible!

9) We need to find a way to fund more psychological therapies and become much less reliant on drugs to numb the pain with the associated colossal bill paid to Big Pharma.

 

 

This is an area I am really passionate about. I am committing to keep this conversation alive, to ensure that we make a shift in our organisations towards a REACh approach, to find a deeper and more effective partnership with colleagues in education, social services and the police and to create space for more training and awareness for all our staff teams. I know how painful this conversation is, but I also know how utterly damaging it will be if we don’t change the future and prevent this from being a perpetual story through the generations. It is time for the hearts of the elders to turn to the children. Together we can reimagine the future. Together we can.

 

 

Here is a really helpful film:

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A-Z of Health and Wellbeing

Happy New Year!

 

We often start a New Year with resolutions, things which we would like to change for the better. so, I thought I’d start this year of blogging with a vlog about my perspective on the A-Z of what affects your Health and Wellbeing the most.

 

It’s longer than most of the videos on my new YouTube Channel (Dr Andy Knox), at nearly 15 minutes long, but it is pretty tricky to talk through 26 different aspects of health and wellbeing in under 3 minutes!

 

So…..he is a list of the things I talk about……and if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, then you can find the bits in the video that are of interest to you, in helping you think about some changes you might want to make or help you might want to access this year.

 

A is for Alcohol

A is for Adverse Childhood Experiences

B is for Blood Pressure (140/90 – the magic numbers)

C is for Cigarettes

D is for Don’t want to live anymore

E is for Exercise

F is for Fluids

F is for Food

G is for Glucose (Sugar)

H is for Housing

H is for Heating

I is for Irregular Pulse

J is for Joy

K is for Kindness to NHS Staff

L is for Loneliness

M is for Money (Debt)

N is for Narcotics (Drugs)

O is for Obesity/Overweight

P is for Pollution

Q is for Quarrelling

R is for Road Taffic Accidents

S is for Stress

T is for Temper (Anger)

U is for Underweight

V is for Violence (Domestic Violence)

W is for Worry

X is for Xenophobia

Y is for Your Ego

Z is for Zzzzzzzzzzz (Sleep Deprivation)

 

 

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