Health improvement

Come along and meet your local NHS health trainers and discover the wide range of health improvement services available in your area at our Love your lifestyle events at Sunnyfield House, Guisborough on Thursday 29 August and Manor Youth and Community Centre on Thursday 5 September.

Mums from across Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland are being invited to take part in worldwide breastfeeding awareness event on Saturday.
As part of the World Breastfeeding Week, which runs from Thursday 1 August, thousands of breastfeeding women and their babies/children across the world will gather in their own communities to take part in the Big Latch On, a synchronized breastfeeding event to be held in multiple locations.

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is offering FREE community-based healthy heart checks next week. The 30-minute healthy heart checks will be conducted by NHS nursing staff and will be available to anyone who fits the criteria.

Are you, or is someone you know, at risk of falling? Would you like to know more about services available in your area? As part of Age UK’s falls awareness week, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s falls team is holding a health promotion event to get people to put their ‘best foot forward’ by keeping their feet healthy to prevent falls in later life.

There’s a packed programme of events on Teesside this week as Men’s Health Week gets into full swing. The aim of the week-long campaign this year is to tackle stigma in men’s mental health and promote mental well-being and help-seeking in men. On Teesside, there is a ‘sold-out’ free football tournament and a series of 90 minute ‘Toolbox talk’ workshops, aimed at encouraging men to be more active.

The cardiology department at the Friarage Hospital is hosting an event as part of this year’s heart rhythm week. The event will take place in the hub at the hospital between Monday 3 and Friday 7 June 2013, and will join hundreds of others across the country celebrating heart rhythm week and promoting this year’s theme ‘know the difference, make a difference’. To raise awareness the cardiology department and resuscitation team will be demonstrating basic life support (CPR) and automated cardiac defibrillators in the hub on Tuesday 4 June in the morning and Thursday 6 June in the afternoon.

Following on from the success of the monthly men’s health service ‘Waist removal’ in Middlesbrough, the same free service is now available in Redcar twice a month. The new free men’s health service will take place on the second and fourth Thursdays of every month, beginning on 13 June, at the Fire Escape, Redcar Fire Station, Trunk Road, Redcar from 5pm to 8pm and is open to all males aged 18 and over.

A free football tournament is being held at Goals Soccer Centre in Middlesbrough to mark the end of what hopes to be a very successful Men’s Health Week.The tournament, on Sunday 16 June, is open to workforce teams who are focussed on improving men’s health. As well as the competition there will also be stalls there promoting health initiatives and services specifically designed for men.

Smokers across Teesside are being encouraged to swap fags for swag and consider the financial benefits of quitting this No Smoking Day. Nearly one in six UK adults smoke but figures show around two thirds of them actually want to quit.

Dave Speight is a busy man. He is sales director, who works long hours, many of them on the road, and only visits his GP when he knows he’s ‘unwell’. But Dave received ‘a wake-up call’ after the company arranged a free healthy heart check run by the local NHS cardiovascular screening service.