We are absolutely delighted to inform you that our fibroids research study has now begun after receiving ethics approval from the Ministry of Health last month. Our research project will explore the experiences of women residing in St Kitts and Nevis, who have been affected by fibroids.

The reason for trying to understand these experiences is because it has become clear that fibroids are a common health issue affecting women in St Kitts and Nevis. It is therefore important to explore if fibroids are affecting the quality of life of women in the Federation and understand what challenges women may be facing so we can provide effective and appropriate support, advocate on behalf of women, and ensure that women receive the best medical care possible.

We’re Looking For Volunteers

If you live in St Kitts and Nevis, are between the ages of 18 and 55 and have been diagnosed with fibroids within the last 5 years (any time between January 2015 and January 2020), you can take part in this research.

As a participant, you will be asked to take part in a 90-minute interview and in exchange for your time, you will receive $50EC.

 More Information

If you’re interested in taking part in this study or have any questions, please contact Abi Begho by emailing research@lakehealthandwellbeing.com or calling  1 869 765 8702.

Ethics Approval Details

This research study was granted ethics approval by St Kitts Ministry of Health’s Interim Ethics Review Committee on 12^th December 2019 (our ethics approval number is IERC-2019-12-035)

Research Partners

                                                 

This project is a partnership between Lake Health and Wellbeing, Serrette Brown Research and Consulting and Soca Girls Rock!

Today, we are delighted to share with you a guest blog post from Dyna Criss.

Dyna holds a degree in health and fitness, has worked as a health instructor for over a decade with a number of prominent health-related organizations and is a writer at heart.

 In this guest blog post, Dyna discusses how you can maintain a healthy weight by practising mindful eating.

People who want to maintain the right body weight can try mindful eating. Often, while eating, we can become preoccupied, distracted by our thoughts and others around us. Mindful eaters stay in the present moment and truly focus on the task at hand. Mindful eating requires that we eat slowly and reflect on why we’re eating, savour the taste of our food and listen to our body so that we pick up on our body’s signal of when we’re full, to avoid overeating.

Research suggests that mindful eating can help improve our eating habits and address binge eating, as well as eating for comfort.

Mindful eating can be challenging so below are some tips and tricks to help you get started

Reflect

Before eating try pausing for a moment. Now, think about how you are feeling. Are you stressed? Hungry? Bored? Happy? Ask yourself, what you want and what your body needs? After getting the answer to these questions, you can then choose the right food, at the right time and in the right quantity.

Take A Seat

 You should never eat in a rush. First, take a seat, get comfortable and then start eating. You will not be able to enjoy your meal or track your food intake if you are in a hurry or multitasking.

Turn off the TV and Put Away Your Phone

 Many people watch TV or interact with their phone while eating. These are significant distractions, that prevent us from being aware of the taste and quantity of what we are eating.

Be Aware of Your Portion Size

If you have purchased something to eat from a food vendor, eating it directly from the package can lead to overeating as we feel obligated to eat everything in one sitting.  It is better to place a small portion on a plate and tackle that, let it digest and if you’re still hungry, add another small portion. If there is any leftover, you can save the rest for another time.  If you’re cooking at home, be aware of what a serving size is and then make sure you adjust your portion size accordingly, so you don’t consume more than you realise.

Use Smaller Plates

If you see less than your stomach will crave less. Try using a smaller plate that will help you to eat adequately, but not excessively. A small plate size is a simple way to control the quantity of food you eat.

Be Thankful

Before having your meal, take a break for a minute and acknowledge and appreciate what it has taken to get every piece of food on to your plate. From farmers and factory workers to the chefs and your dining companions as well as your job that provides the resources to buy what you eat, there is much to be thankful for. When you pause to acknowledge this, you will develop a deeper appreciation and respect for the food you eat and this can positively affect your eating habits.

Chew At Least 30 times

 After having each bite, try to chew at least 30 times.  Not only does this enable you to enjoy the flavour and texture of your food, but it prevents overeating by giving your gut time to send a signal telling your brain you are full before you overindulge.

Put down Your Knife and Fork

 Many times, when we eat, we’re in a rush so we are ready to take our next bite before finishing what’s already in our mouth. Try putting down your knife and fork, sitting back, relaxing and enjoying what you’re currently eating. Try to refrain from picking up your knife and fork until you have swallowed what’s in your mouth.

You Can Leave Something On Your Plate

As kids, we were taught to finish all the food that was on our plate. We were not allowed to leave the table until our plate was empty. This has led to many of us overeating and not recognizing when we’re really full. It’s better to take your time, listen to your body and when you start to feel full, stop. To avoid waste, simply pack what is left for another time.

Try Solitude and Silence 

Every now and again, try eating in a quiet, tranquil environment. Silence can be challenging as our minds can wander so try to acknowledge any thoughts you may have and then swiftly return to the present moment and enjoy your meal.

Also, most of us like to eat with friends, family or colleagues which is nice but can be distracting. Mealtimes can be a good opportunity to have some me-time, a break from chores, work or the busyness of the day. Try eating alone sometimes and use this time to truly appreciate your mealtime, it may be the only time you get to relax especially during the working week. It also gives you the opportunity to be more food-conscious and really enjoy what you’re eating.

Final Words

Mindful eating offers various benefits. It is helpful for those who want to lose weight and stay fit, makes us more aware of the types of food we are consuming and encourages us to make better food choices.  Through mindful eating, we can improve our eating style and habits, stay healthy and maintain our optimum weight.

Let us know what you think about mindful eating in the comments section below and if you try mindful eating, please share your experience with us, we’d love to hear how it went.

Sources

1. https://www.wikihow.com/Practice-Mindful-Eating
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5556586/https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/03/402171/mindful-eating-meditation-may-lead-better-metabolic-health
3. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=05&q=mindful+eating+researches&btnG=
4. https://careactive.com/

Picture Credits

Tobias Nii Kwatei Quartey

Pablo Merchán Montes

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2020!

As usual, as one year ends and the other begins, we like to look back and reflect on our achievements. It’s important for our morale to take some time out to focus on the positive as we don’t have a lot of time during the year to fully appreciate our successes.

This year, we focused our attention on two main areas – childhood obesity and women’s health with our overall objective being to tackle non-communicable diseases in St Kitts and Nevis.

We are delighted to share our 2019 achievements:

1. We continued our work on fibroids, a women’s health issue that is often neglected. We teamed up with organizations from across the world in July for a global fibroids awareness campaign; continued with our fibroids self-care webinar series and formed a partnership with Soca Girls Rock and Serrette Brown Research and Consulting to initiate a qualitative research study on fibroids and received ethics approval from the Ministry of Health, this project will start officially in January 2020. We also held our first fibroids educational event in St Kitts which was attended by over 40 women.

2. We received funding from the ICDF to start our My Healthy Heroes project which aims to encourage a healthy lifestyle in children.

3. We conducted three 6-week chronic disease self-management courses reaching 43 people who either had a chronic health condition, were caring for someone with a chronic disease or were at a high risk of developing a chronic disease.

4. We continued as an active member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition’s Childhood Obesity Prevention Action Team and assisted in collecting data for the team’s recently published sugary drinks infographic, advocated for front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labels in the Caribbean and a sugar-sweetened beverage tax.

5. We became members of the St Kitts and Nevis Bureau of Standards Technical Committee for Labelling as part of our work to advocate for FOP nutrition labels. We also became a member of the St Kitts Ministry of Health’s Elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission (EMTCT) of HIV and Syphilis Committee (EMTCT Committee).

6. We launched our Healthy Kids SKN campaign and a campaign for World Cancer Day.

7. We attended or participated in a number of events including the ICDF’s Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Forum, the Ministry of Health’s SSB Focus Group, discussed stress management at the Verchilds High School and raised awareness of the importance of a healthy lifestyle and attended the HCC’s NCDs and Conflict of Interest meeting in Barbados.

8. Finally, we expanded our consultancy services from working with one client in 2018 to six clients in 2019 and this included both grant writing and research support. This branch of our work has helped us raise much-needed funding to cover the cost of some of our work.

And that, my friends, is it. It was indeed a productive year.

We would like to say a big thank you to all our funders, clients, collaborators and supporters for your encouragement, kind words and support. We really appreciate it and look forward to a fantastic year ahead. We are truly excited about 2020 and can’t wait to get started.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas today.

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus today, it reminds us to reflect on and be grateful for life.

This year was a sad one for us, Abi Begho (our founder) lost her mother to cancer (Multiple Myeloma) and that is why this Christmas we’re reflecting on the gift of life – why it’s given and why it’s taken away.

Life is given to us by God as a precious gift.  A gift that has immense possibilities and potential.  Through our reflection, we have come to realise that whether we like it or not, the gift of life comes with accountability and responsibility. We are accountable to God as to how we use the gift he entrusted us with and we are responsible for our choices, actions and our impact. With this in mind, we have a new mindset, life has fresh meaning for us, it goes beyond what we want to do with our lives, but identifying what  God’s purpose for our life is. We must fulfil this purpose, make a difference and make our community a better place, in our own way. So one step at a time, one day at a time, one tiny action at our time, in 2020 we aim to fulfil God’s purpose for Lake Health and Wellbeing.

As we fulfil our purpose, we have to think of the lives of others. We thank God for our loved ones, colleagues, collaborators, followers, supports and funders and the impact they have had on our lives. As we enter into 2020 our aim is to show everyone appreciation and to not take others for granted. We endeavour to respect people’s time, opinions, contribution, encouragement, words, talent, messages, phone calls….everything.  We have to take a good look at the effect we have on others and ensure that we have a positive impact on every single person we come in contact with and ensure that every contact we have with people is positive, productive and kind.

Life is taken away when our journey has come to an end. When we get to that point and we look back on our lives, will we be happy with how we ran the race? This question will be at the forefront of our minds every day.

Death has been a powerful lesson for us. We hope this blog post hasn’t been too preachy but this is just what we have been reflecting on today as we remember the birth of Christ and the importance of a life well-lived.

We wish you a great day today, filled with love, shared with family and with a promise of better days ahead.

xx

Non-communicable diseases (NCDS) like cancer, diabetes and heart disease are a major challenge in St Kitts and Nevis. Data has demonstrated that NCDs are becoming an epidemic in the Federation with 83% of deaths being due to NCDs. We must do something about this to prevent our citizens from dying prematurely.

One approach to tackling NCDs is to focus on the next generation and ensure that children adopt a healthy lifestyle. We have to create a healthy environment at schools, in homes and within society so that children can make healthy choices.

Our Healthy Kids SKN campaign aims to raise awareness of the changes that children need to make in order to reduce their risk of developing an NCD later in life. We’re encouraging children, parents and teachers to focus on three main areas – eating healthily, drinking healthily and physical activity.

Eating Healthily

Junk food is everywhere so we must make a concerted effort to help children resist temptation and eat healthily. Children should eat a variety of foods to ensure they are getting enough nutrients to develop and grow. This includes consuming foods from all food types. In particular, parents should ensure that their children cut down on foods that are high in sugar, salt and saturated fat and introduce more fruits and vegetables into their diet.

Children should eat 5-7 portions of fruits and vegetables every day, and eat colourfully, and aim to eat different colours of fruit and vegetables.

Drinking Healthily

Children in the Caribbean drink large quantities of sugary drinks putting them at risk of becoming obese or overweight.  Caribbean children’s frequency of consuming sugary drinks was found to be amongst the highest out of 187 countries. Furthermore, teenagers (12 to 15-year olds) in Barbados, Jamaica, the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago reported drinking sugary drinks three times or more a day, and in St Kitts and Nevis, it was found that children consumed at least one carbonated soft drink a day.

Soft drinks are very high in sugar, for example, a can of coke contains 9.75 teaspoons (39g) of sugar and even juices contain high levels of sugar, a 330ml box of Rica Orange Juice contains 10.6 teaspoons of (42.2g) sugar – that’s more than coke!

We’re encouraging children to cut out the sugary drinks and drink water instead.

Physical Activity

For children to get healthy, they need to be active every day. The World Health Organisation recommends that children accumulate 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity every day.

We must get creative about physical activity as in St Kitts and Nevis, children are not active enough, over half of children, 58.4%, are physically inactive. We need fun approaches that don’t feel like work.

Working With Young People

We’re delighted to have worked with a young designer, Hadiya Lewis, to create the three graphics for this campaign. This is a great example of the talent and creativity that exists and how young people can contribute to communicating important health messages.

SKN Moves Support

We’re delighted that this initiative has been endorsed by SKN Moves and we’d like to thank the SKN Moves team for their support.

You can find out more about SKN Moves here

Signed, sealed, delivered and it’s a wrap! On Tuesday 26^th November 2019, we completed the final session of our six-week chronic disease self-management course. This was our third and final workshop of the year. In April 2019, we held our first 6-week course, and this was followed by our second one in August 2019.

This final set of workshops began on 22^nd October with a class of 13, all-female and whose ages ranged from 25 to 60.

We had a dynamic group of ladies who were keen to learn, very willing to participate and share their health stories and experiences and support each other; this created a great atmosphere for learning and built a strong sense of camaraderie.

Over the six weeks, we covered a number of self-management techniques such as action-planning, physical activity, problem-solving, decision making, healthy eating, medication management, communication skills and more.

Through group work, brainstorming sessions and homework, the course material came to life for participants and they were able to apply what was learnt each week to their own personal situation.

During our weekly feedback sessions, it was very rewarding to hear the impact the self-management techniques had made in just a short space of time and to hear of how each topic caused participants to reflect on their lifestyle and make a commitment to make healthier choices.

As usual, the section on food labels caused quite a stir when participants realized the quantities of sugar, salt and fat in many of the items they consume and this was a bit of a wake-up call with participants making small changes like switching to skimmed milk and reducing their portion sizes.

Once again, we found facilitating this course to have been a very rewarding experience and look forward to hosting more of these courses next year.

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended the course. We know it was a significant time commitment and we appreciate your dedication, time and your willingness to get involved.

On 14^th November 2019, we were delighted to have been able to attend the Forum for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control which was hosted by the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund in partnership with the Ministry of Health in St Kitts and Nevis.

This event aimed to bring together both local and international organisations working in the field to share their experiences, present their work and thus provide a platform to learn, share best practices, promote regional collaboration and identify the best way forward in tackling chronic diseases in St Kitts and Nevis.

This was a very important event as chronic diseases are a major cause of death in St Kitts and Nevis – 83% of deaths in the Federation are due to chronic diseases. Therefore, the prevention and control of these conditions is a major priority for the Ministry of Health and the ICDF is working towards supporting the government to strengthen its non-communicable disease (NCD) strategy.

Over the three days of the forum, in attendance were representatives from CARPHA, the Ministries of Health of Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines and St Kitts and Nevis; the JNF Hospital in St Kitts; the St Kitts Diabetes Association, Community Health Centres in St Kitts and Nevis and the Taipei Veterans General Hospital.

We attended on the second day of this event. The theme for the day was: ‘Chronic Disease Management – Where to Go?’ This was an excellent and informative day featuring presentations from:

• Dr Bichara Sahely, Consultant Physician, Internal Medicine, JNF Hospital, St Kitts
• Dr Aljay Pierre, Medical Officer, Internal Medicine, JNF Hospital, St Kitts
• Dr Wei-Cheng Tseng, Taipei Veterans General Hospital
• Dr Hazel Laws, Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health, St Kitts
• Dr Marissa Carty, NCD Program Coordinator, Ministry of Health, St Kitts
• Mr Feng-Ta Tsai, Project Manager, Taiwan, ICDF

Together, the speakers provided an overview of the position around NCDs and made recommendations for what is required going forward if we are to effectively reduce the burden caused by NCDs. The take-home message of the day was the need for a greater focus on NCD prevention as most countries in the Caribbean will not be able to address NCDs with medical care alone.

The event ended with a very lively Q&A and panel discussion, giving the audience the opportunity to engage with the speakers and collectively explore solutions to addressing NCDs.

We very much enjoyed attending this event and found the presentations from Dr Sahely and Dr Pierre, particularly insightful. They both provided a very interesting perspective from doctors working on the frontline at the JNF Hospital to diagnose, treat and support patients.  They highlighted that there is much work to be done in the Federation and this will involve improvements and changes to the system to facilitate prevention, early diagnosis, better management of patients with NCDs and an improvement in the quality of care delivered.

We look forward to playing our own very small part in tackling NCDs and would like to thank the ICDF and Ministry of Health for organising this event.

It’s been pretty busy over the past few months so you may have noticed we’ve been very quiet on the social media, newsletter and blog front. We had to take a break from these three activities and focus on some new projects.

We’re a tiny team and during busy periods we have to pull back from the lighter work to ensure that we can get things done.

So, what have we been up to?

Over the past few months our  Public Health support service has taken off and we have had the pleasure of working with clients, all NGOs, on research and grant writing contracts.

Our clients are working on a range of wellbeing projects across four African countries including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and South Africa.  What a fantastic learning experience this has been. The wonders of technology have meant that we can cross borders and cultures right from the comfort of our office and have a significant impact on organisations that require support to achieve their aims and objects.  It has been fulfilling assisting small organisations in developing their project ideas and acquiring the funds they require to conduct much-needed work in the areas of FGM, poverty alleviation, education, healthcare and more.  And, because we’re a non-profit we can offer these services at an affordable price to organisations that wouldn’t normally be able to access these services, and the money we have made from these contracts is funding our own work – our fibroids programme, our childhood obesity prevention projects and covering our operational costs.  This has been a win-win.

As well as the growth of this new service, over the past few months, we’ve received two grants and are working on a physical activity bid for the Ministry of Education. It’s fun times ahead.

The first grant we received was from the Taiwanese International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF) for a new fun pilot project we’re in the process of planning called My Healthy Heroes. We’re developing engaging resources which can be used in schools and at home to educate children about healthy eating and to encourage children to make healthy choices. We’re delighted to be piloting our approach with the Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Basseterre, St Kitts, starting in 2020. At the moment we’re working hard to develop a collection of resources, ensure they fit into the school curriculum and gain useful insights from teachers, children and the Ministry of Education to help inform the direction of this pilot project.

The second grant we received was from Soca Girls Rock! to support our new research study exploring the needs of women living with fibroids. This work aims to provide an in-depth exploration of women’s experiences and help us identify any psychosocial, personal, institutional and physical challenges that women with fibroids may experience that may impact their health and wellbeing. By exploring these issues, we can develop an understanding of how fibroids may affect a woman’s quality of life and this will enable us to begin to focus on strategies to support women who have been affected by fibroids. We’ve recently applied for ethics approval and once granted, our project will begin – yay!

Finally, we’re excited to have received approval from the Ministry of Education for a bid to conduct some work to increase the amount and quality of physical activity that children participate in using an innovative approach. This approach fuses 3-D animation with physical activity. It’s still a very early stage in the bid process so we won’t say much more, but once things progress, we’ll provide an update.

So, yes, work-wise it has been a great few months and we are very grateful for all the opportunities that have come our way. A big thank you the ICDF, Soca Girls Rock! and The Ministry of Education for their support and a big thank you to our new clients, it has been wonderful working with you.

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we recently received a grant from Soca Girls Rock! (SGR!) to support our new fibroids research project.

At the time of writing, we were just about to submit our application to the Ministry of Health’s Interim Ethics Review Committee for ethics approval and once that is granted our project will begin.

Our new project is a qualitative research study that will explore the experiences of women living in St Kitts and Nevis who have been affected by fibroids. This work aims to provide an in-depth exploration of women’s experiences and help us identify any psychosocial, personal, institutional and physical challenges that women with fibroids may experience that may impact their health and wellbeing. By exploring these issues, we can develop an understanding of how fibroids may affect a woman’s quality of life and this will enable us to begin to focus on strategies to support women who have been affected by fibroids.

To our knowledge, there has been no research conducted in St Kitts and Nevis to understand the experiences of women living with fibroids. Therefore, this study will make a significant contribution to filling an information gap in women’s health.

We would like to say a big thank you to Soca Girls Rock! for supporting this project and for continuing to support women-led, Caribbean-based initiatives.

When asked about the importance of providing funds to women-led organisations to support research projects like this, SGR! stated:

“The challenges of womanhood can and should be addressed by women.”

We are also grateful to SGR! for providing us with access to the technical expertise to conduct this research project by facilitating a collaboration with Dr Fanta Waterman (MPH, PhD), the Managing Director of Serrette Brown Research and Consulting.  We are very much looking forward to working with Dr Waterman and appreciate all the useful insight and advice that she has already provided.

About Soca Girls Rock!

Soca Girls Rock! aims to address the unique set of social and economic challenges that the Caribbean faces. These challenges include access to quality education and health care, high unemployment rates for youth and women, high poverty and crime rates, and income inequality. SGR! tackles these issues through its unique and innovative approach to leadership, activism, and civic engagement. They harness the collective time, talent, and treasure of self-identified Caribbean women, living in and outside of the Region, to provide technical and financial assistance to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) committed to social change.

 About Serrette Brown Research and Consulting

Serrette Brown Research and Consulting (SBRC) is a boutique research consulting practice specializing in epidemiology, population health research, program evaluation, evidence gap analyses, digital health and publications development strategy.

They partner with non-profits, non-government organizations (NGO), biopharmaceutical companies, health services research organizations and policy implementation agencies based in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. SBRC staff have been the recipient of research awards and featured on national television.

More Information

If you have any questions about this project or would like any further information, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by email research@lakehealthandwellbeing.com

We’re delighted to announce that we have once again teamed up with Because We Care to host another women’s health event in St Kitts.

Girl Talk: Diabetes will focus on women and diabetes and will take place on Saturday 14th September. We’ll be having a panel of excellent speakers covering topics such as:

• An Introduction to Diabetes
• Diabetes and its Complication
• Living with Diabetes

We’ll also have a small wellness market featuring health, wellbeing and wellness brands, fantastic raffle prizes, free health checks, food and more!

More details to follow, so please stay tuned!

This event is the second event in this series. Our first event focused on fibroids and we had a great day learning more about fibroids and its impact on women. You can read about our previous event here

If you would like to join us for this event, you can register below and make the payment on the day ($90EC).

The information provided in the form below will enable us to contact you about the event regarding updates and important information. We will only use it for this purpose.

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We look forward to seeing you on 14th September and if you have any questions, please email us or call 765 8702.