Gloucestershire’s NHS team wants to encourage local people to be more active, so they live healthier lifestyles and therefore make less demand on health and social care services. This is one of the main themes that emerged from a presentation on the Sustainability and Transformation Plan attended by the parish council in Gloucester yesterday (21 March).
Over the next five years the county’s population is expected to increase by 42,000 and the number of older people with a long term health condition is forecast to soar from 47,500 to 77,000.
A range of initiatives are therefore being launched to encourage more active lifestyles – including programmes that aim to get people ‘walking for health’, setting up Zumba classes, launching community choirs and opportunities for people to do more gardening, and a big push to encourage people to lose weight. Ellen Rule, the local NHS Director of Transformation, said it had already made significant progress with its weight loss initiative – collectively the people of Gloucestershire have already lost the equivalent of seven double decker buses in weight.
Once Pineholt Village Hall has been enlarged and upgraded (the work should be completed by the end of the summer) we will investigate if there is demand for fitness or similar classes to be run there.
Other elements of the Transformation plan include establishing 16 ‘cluster GP’ practices (one of these could be set up on the Perrybrook development to serve the residents of Hucclecote), and a major overhaul of IT systems.
The full Plan can be viewed online here. www.gloucestershirestp.net