Public Health Collaboration conference

One of the pleasures of my role as a perioperative patient representative is networking with like minded people to gain insights into areas where my knowledge base could be enhanced.

I was therefore excited to attend the Public Health Collaboration's 8th annual conference as a delegate in May. The PHC is a charity dedicated to improving public health and saving the NHS money at the same time through sustainable lifestyle changes. CPOC has an Advisory Group with 56 members and the PHC has recently joined this. I was impressed with their holistic take on prehabilitation topics.

The conference saw 500 people attend in person each day, along with an additional 300 online over the two days. That's an impressive number, which reflects the passion and drive of a wide range of people from public, patient and clinical backgrounds.

Of particular interest to me on the first day were the themes of metabolic health and its potential benefits especially to both prevent, and in many cases reverse diabetes. In the afternoon, one passionate speaker spoke on the topic 'Diet: What I wish I knew when I was a teenager'.

Another highlight was chatting in the breaks about a project that is being taken up in a number of GP practices around the UK called the Lifestyle Club (TLC) based on low carb dietary approaches for people with type 2 diabetes. This has just won a HSJ award and is QISMET accredited and consists of an online health coaching service created by the charity.  Each session is led by an experienced health coach to help participants improve their lifestyles to reduce medication and potentially put their diabetes into remission. The evidence so far, from a pilot of 398 people, seems impressive and an evidence-based research programme is being developed to establish the benefits of rolling this out to a larger population of patients in primary care.

I asked Sam Feltham, the CEO for the PHC for his views on prehabilitation and how diet could improve the health of people waiting for an operation:

"50% of GP appointments and 70% of all inpatient bed days are due to long term lifestyle related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, which cost the NHS at least £35 billion per year. However, we could largely reduce all this by improving our health through sustainable lifestyle changes. The best way to do that is to move away from ultra-processed food and embrace real food. In my view, not only is this vital for your own health, it's vitally important to help the NHS save its resources and better function."

With the worrying healthcare statistics in the UK of rising obesity rates, especially in younger people, increasing prevalence of diabetes and long waiting lists, it was refreshing to attend a conference where everybody could see benefits in a fresh approach to a holistic lifestyle, increasing exercise and activity as well as improving diet and nutrition. All of these resonate with CPOC's drive to educate a population prior to needing an operation and to support patients should they require an operation. We encourage people to look at our new CPOC resources pages about preparation for surgery and exercise.

I learned a lot from the conference, gained new network opportunities and came away with that ‘floaty' feeling of being around passionate and enthusiastic people, who wish to make a difference in healthcare.

Lawrence Mudford 

Patient representative CPOC