Introduction
Needs defined:
The project began in November 2022 during a meeting with South Tees Hospital Trust’s Consultant Midwife, who raise the issue of support with physical activity within the perinatal pathway.
The trust recognised that a proportion of patients within the perinatal pathway have high BMI’s and although the trust offers additional support to those with a BMI over 40 this excludes those with a BMI of 30-39 who would be categorised as obese. A frequent trend was identified that patients with a BMI of mid to high 30’s were returning with subsequent pregnancies with higher BMI’s often 40 or above, therefore not providing preventive support.
Insight/ research gathered:
Once the need was highlighted significant research was conducted, this included mapping of current local perinatal physical activity provision, perinatal mental health support and resources promoting physical activity. A wide range of resources were pre-existing but were not being utilised. Several professionals and parents were contacted for their views on this issue. The themes mentioned locally echoed national statistics, this included lack of knowledge and confidence in discussing physical activity from health professionals’ perspective and high levels of anxiety and skewed perspective of risks from the public.
Research reported the positive impact physical activity has on maternal outcomes in general including reduced rates of, postnatal depression, emergent caesarean sections, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia etc. providing further rationale for this project.
Project brief:
The concept was to create a simple, accessible, non-clinical documents, which are centred in encouragement, empowerment, and education. The content is light-touch and basic whilst giving people the ability to access curated, trusted information via the QR code. All research, content and signposted information has been from reputable sources for example The Active Pregnancy Foundation, CMO guidelines NHS etc.
Consultation process:
The resources were codesigned with a range of professionals and parents. Professionals from a range of services were approached including midwives, health visitors, mental health therapists, public health consultants, maternity voices members, family hubs, GP’s and parent forums etc. The codesign began in the preliminary stages of forming a concept throughout the development and distribution stages.
Local distribution process:
Although the project was developed following a meeting with South Tees Hospital Trust, I was keen to implement the resources across the Tees Valley. The distribution of resources is based both in health and community settings to increase the reach of support.
The integration into health settings include electronic copies uploaded to Badgernet (within South Tees Trust) and 0-19 Health Visiting app in Darlington and Talking Therapies service (both IMPACT on Teesside and Talking Therapies in Darlington). I intend to integrate the resources into CCDFT and North Tees who are in the process of setting up Badgernet within those localities.
Physical resources will be provided to South Tees trust to display within waiting rooms, wards, bedside folders, clinical rooms. I intent to replicate this across GP surgeries, sexual health clinics across the Tees Valley. The hope would be at each point of clinical contact a possible patient has they would have access to the resources.
Community distribution will be focused on family and community hubs, childcare venues, play centres, parent, and baby groups. Again, I am aiming to distribute the resources in places parents would frequently visit to increase the engagement.
National distribution:
I have utilised the Active Partnership to distribute the resources across the country. I had the opportunity to present the project at the AP maternity networking meeting which had several attendees from a range of Active Partnerships including Active Sussex, Active Dorset, Active Lincolnshire, Get Berkshire Active, Active Cornwall among others. Many of the AP’s were interested in implementing the resources within their localities and requested copies of the resources within the localised QR codes. Sharing this resource will hopefully create more impact and system change.
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