Heart and Soul

A Building Healthy Communities and Dumfries and Galloway College Partnership

A new initiative is in the process of being set up by Building Healthy Communities in partnership with Dumfries and Galloway College.  This initiative is aimed at overweight men over the age of 45.

Heart and Soul will comprise a cardio workout and Tai Chi for Health and Wellbeing.  The cardio workout will be personalised for each participant and will take place in the state of the art gym at the college – this group will have exclusive use of the gym for these sessions.  Tai Chi for Health will also be offered as part of this package and this will be led by fully trained Building Healthy Communities’ Tai Chi instructors.

This is a tremendous opportunity and anyone interested should contact me (helenmackintosh1@nhs.net) as soon as possible to secure a place as spaces are limited.

Please note that this service is offered completely free of charge.

A brief outline of what will be offered by PVG checked 2^nd year HND students: -

• Applied Nutrition and Health Assessment
• Fitness Assessment and Diagnostic Testing
• Applied Exercise Prescription for Special Population Groups
• Plan, Teach and Evaluate a Physical Activity Programme to Meet the Needs of Older Adults

Ideally we are looking to work with clients with at least one of the following conditions:

• Coronary heart disease
• Stroke
• Obesity
• Diabetes (Type I or II)
• Osteoporosis
• Hypertension
• High cholesterol
• Food allergies and/or intoleerances

The course will consist of: -

• Introductory meetings to get to know the client
• Detailed health and lifestyle assessment 
• Static and dymanic fitness tests suitable to the client 
• Health related fitness tests
• Written feedback and comparison of results to normative data
• Plan to carry out a nutritional assessment with the client
• Complete a week long food diary
• Analyse the results and interpret nutritional feedback to the client
• Prescribe nutritional advice to clients
• Prepare and deliver an exercise session suitibler for the client
• The aim for 2015/2016 is to prepare and deliver a 12 week exercise programme for a selected individual

CREATIVE COMMUNITY

A partnership art and literacy project between Community Learning and Development and Building Healthy Communities whereby eight people will work together with the ultimate goal of their work being displayed publicly. 

This project aims to: -

• To produce individual pieces of art which will be transferred onto boards for display in rooms within the North West Resource Centre and possibly the exterior of the building
• To produce a short piece of creative writing to accompany the art
• To produce an amalgamation of the boards this can be used for publicity purposes
• To celebrate the completed works through an exhibition

This will all take place over a 16 week period and will comprise: -

• Start with Art for the first 6 weeks
• Creative Writing for 4 weeks
• Working on Art piece for 6 weeks

The places for this particular initiative have all been filled; however, opportunities do exist for participation in other BHC led art and creative writing sessions.  Please see and complete our current note of interest to be considered for a place.