HIB Screening at Peterborough Sunday 13 June 2010

A Health Screening Day organised by The Health Improvement Board of CoEJ was held in Peterborough on Sunday 13 June 2010. The majority of those that attended were in the over 50’s category.

From the data collected, it was noticed that the areas requiring more awareness to the community were in, weight management, smoking, regular exercise, stress management and dental and optical checkups.

It was recommended that dentists should be visited every 6 months and most people were unaware of this. The main dental problem amongst our members was gum disease. This is compounded by certain habits like eating sopari. It may be worth considering engaging community dentists to discuss these issues in the centre.


Smokers were also advised that they could obtain assistance via a spontaneous appointment with the local PCT Smoking advisor.

Regular exercise was another issue which was apparently very low and at some point education events may need to be organised. 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise 5 times a week was recommended. As an example, one of the Jamaats organises Sunday morning walks, on top of the regular football and swimming sessions.

Discussing stress and related conditions like anxiety and depression are taboo in our community. We must as a European community as a whole try and cross boundaries to address issues like these.

The HIB Screening team believe these screenings to be the first step in ‘better health promotion within our community so that the follow up event would demonstrate improvements within the health of the community members.

The HIB team believes that these type of screenings should be the 1st  step in health promotion so that when they revisit the Jamaat in 3-4 years for another event, they can assess if any improvements have been made in the health of the community.

The day was a great success and feedback questionnaires reveal that those that attended greatly benefitted from the day.

HIB