Let's Get Moving Cambridgeshire aims to improve the health of the Cambridgeshire population, specifically by increasing levels of physical activity. This is done by promoting existing opportunities, developing new opportunities, and supporting individuals and groups with lower levels of physical activity and higher needs.
The Let’s Get Moving (LGM) Programme was developed as a collaborative initiative between the district councils, their partners and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Active Partnership Living Sport, and is funded by Cambridgeshire County Council Health Committee.
It has a key role in the delivery of the Cambridgeshire Healthy Weight Strategy with its central themes of collaboration across the system to support healthy behavioural change and communities taking responsibility for their health and wellbeing.These themes and objectives are reflected in the Let’s Get Moving Programme which focuses upon increasing levels of physical activity amongst the inactive and engaging local communities in developing and owning initiatives that are sustainable.
Central to LGM is the requirement to provide added value through its integration with other related services and initiatives with the objectives of:
· Improving access to opportunities
· Increasing awareness amongst key services and organisations that they can play an important role in promoting physical activity through referring people to local opportunities
· Sharing resources to deliver activities
The Cambridgeshire Physical Activity Pathway, or behaviour change pathway, illustrates the process of an individual accessing support to be more active. The entry routes into the pathway are varied and not exclusive, therefore as additional services or partners that have a role to play in supporting people to be healthy are identified, the access routes are consistent into LGM. The image below illustrates this process.
It identifies the process of primary care and potentially secondary care services referring patients into existing health and wellbeing interventions where needed, for example exercise on referral and weight management services. These services offering interventions are then better supported to offer exit routes to sustained healthy lifestyle choices through the support offered by LGM.
There is also the opportunity for health care services to directly refer patients into LGM, where their condition does not necessitate intensive support through the wellbeing interventions but they would benefit from increased physical activity and may, through being more active, avoid having to access those wellbeing intervention services at all.
Finally there is the self referral or enrolment route into LGM where individuals that need support can sign up directly.
It must be made clear that this is a work in progress and while there have been examples of this working positively it is not yet universally adopted. Some examples of where this is happening in practice include:
- Granta Medical Practice – we are receiving direct referrals from the Social Prescribing Navigator employed by the practice and through the Long Term Medical Conditions (LTMC) nurse team.
- Everyone Health – a strong relationship has been developed and regular referrals are now made into LGM of individuals coming through the lifestyle programmes (weight management, smoking cessation etc.).
- Papworth cardiac rehabilitation – patients are directly recruited into LGM with the locality coordinator attending classes towards the end of the programme to support the transition into sustained physical activity.
Evaluation of the wider LGM programme (18 months after programme initiation) evidences that both physical and mental wellbeing levels were reported as improved after 3 months following participation in LGM for more than half of the participants; 51% reported physical wellbeing improvements and 63% reported mental wellbeing improvements. The change in mental wellbeing scores from baseline to follow-up was meaningful[1] across all district areas.
A good proportion (37%) of those who did not meet the desired physical activity levels when they joined LGM were achieving the CMO guidelines within three months. Although more hadn’t achieved this level of activity, a greater proportion (57%) across the county had fully achieved their goal within 3 months, with a further 15% having achieved their goal at least somewhat, indicating that the activity level itself is not always the primary motive for joining a programme like LGM.
[1] A meaningful change in WEMWBS is estimated to be from a 3 to 8 WEMWBS points difference between before and after time points: https://www.corc.uk.net/media/1244/wemwbs_practitioneruserguide.pdf