Today, we’re delighted to share a guest blog post from the team at Mesothelioma Guide.  Mesothelioma Guide connects mesothelioma patients and their loved ones to top doctors, cancer centres and treatment options, plus legal resources. In today’s feature, they dispel the myth that the asbestos-related cancer, mesothelioma, has been eradicated since the introduction of legislation restricting the use of asbestos.

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In the latter half of the 20th century, the general public learned of asbestos’ dangers. They learned the substance is, in fact, a carcinogen, one which can lead to aggressive diseases such as mesothelioma.

The awareness of asbestos’ harm led to increased regulations worldwide and scrutiny of businesses which used the mineral. Most people expected asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma to level off early in the 21st century and eventually fade into obscurity.

This has not happened — nor will it any time soon.

According to the World Journal of Surgery, pleural mesothelioma cases in the United States increased from 2004 to 2014. The World Health Organization revealed that around 43,000 people worldwide die from this cancer. Despite more than 60 countries banning the commercial use of asbestos, the mesothelioma mortality rate has increased worldwide since the 1990s. This is proof that mesothelioma isn’t going anywhere.

National Cancer Database on Mesothelioma

In 2004, there were 1,783 pleural mesothelioma cases in the United States. In 2014, there were 1,961 reported cases. That’s an increase of around 10%.

Pleural mesothelioma accounts for between 70% and 80% of all U.S. mesothelioma cases and the same is true globally. Peritoneal mesothelioma and pericardial mesothelioma comprise the other 20-30% of cases.

According to numerous sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are usually between 3,000 and 3,300 new mesothelioma cases in the U.S. each year. From 2012-2016, there were on average 3,253 new cases each year. In 2016 alone, 3,096 mesothelioma cases were reported.

The World Health Organization estimates that 10,000 new mesothelioma cases each year are diagnosed collectively in Australia, Japan, North America and western Europe.

In the United Kingdom, the incidence of mesothelioma has increased steadily each year from the 1950s (153 cases) to 2010 (2,360 cases). Like we said earlier, this disease isn’t going away.

But…

Mesothelioma Treatment Is Improving

 Science continually evolves, which means treatment for diseases continuously improves. Mesothelioma treatment is getting better, which is good news for patients and their loved ones.

Earlier in 2019, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the Novo TTF-100L medical device for pleural mesothelioma treatment. It is limited to humanitarian use device distinction, but this approval was a significant moment for mesothelioma patients and doctors.

Peritoneal mesothelioma treatment is expanding as well. Many patients receive cytoreductive surgery, plus heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) immediately after the operation. In a study published by the Annals of Surgical Oncology, around 55% of participants who underwent this treatment combination survived for at least three years. Roughly 37% survived for at least five years.

This study only included a few peritoneal mesothelioma patients, and other studies have reported different percentages:

• Between 50% and 65% for three-year survival
• Between 35% and 47% for five-year survival

Mesothelioma Patients Undergoing Treatment More Often

The best route to healing from mesothelioma is undergoing treatment. Surgery is the first choice followed by chemotherapy and radiation. If more patients receive medical help, then more of them will survive longer.

In 2004, treatment and survival rates in the U.S. were as follows:

• Approximately 34% of pleural mesothelioma patients underwent treatment.
• Around 37% of them survived for at least one year after diagnosis.
• Roughly 9% survived for at least three years.

In 2014, the rates were better:

• Around 54% of mesothelioma patients received treatment.
• Roughly 47% survived for at least one year after diagnosis.
• Approximately 15% survived for at least three years.

So, more people are getting treatment for their mesothelioma, and more people are surviving for longer after diagnosis.

How to Find Mesothelioma Treatment

We at Mesothelioma Guide can help patients find quality treatment and potentially extend their lives. Our patient advocate and registered nurse, Jenna Campagna, has connections to the top cancer centres in the USA.

If you or a loved one has mesothelioma, remember that treatment now is better than ever before. Jenna works with patients every day to improve their quality of life and prognosis. Email her at jenna@mesotheliomaguide.com if you wish to explore your treatment options.

More Information

If you have any questions on mesothelioma or would like any further information, you can leave your question for Mesothelioma Guide in the comments section below. Alternatively,  you can visit Mesothelioma Guide’s website here,  like their Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter.

Sources

1. Largely Unchanged Annual Incidence and Overall Survival of Pleural Mesothelioma in the USA. World Journal of Surgery. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007s00268-019-05132-6. Accessed: 08/23/2019.
2. Global mesothelioma deaths reported to the World Health Organization between 1994 and World Health Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/10/11-086678/en/. Accessed: 04/22/2020.
3. Global mesothelioma epidemic: Trend and features. Indian Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4280782/. Accessed: 04/22/2020.
4. Update on the management of malignant peritoneal mesothelioma. Translational Lung Cancer Research. Retrieved from: http://tlcr.amegroups.com/article/view/23788/18535. Accessed: 08/23/2019.
5. Effect of Cytoreductive Surgery and Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy on Quality of Life in Patients with Peritoneal Mesothelioma. Annals of Surgical Oncology. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31069554. Accessed: 05/16/2019.
6. Survival prognostic factors in patients undergoing cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy treatment: analysis from a single oncological center. WorldJournal of Surgical Oncology. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4815060/. Accessed: 04/12/2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many of us feeling anxious and uncertain about the future and with this in mind, we are delighted to share some tips from NJC Therapy Practice to help you find some inner peace during this difficult time.

Six Principles to Nurture Balance and Peace in Your Life

1. Find your calm before you start anything (e.g. deep, slow breaths; visualization; whatever works for you)
2. Know you control your thoughts (limitless possibilities)
3. Know you control your actions (pause and decide how you’re going to act)
4. Everything is neutral (until you give it meaning i.e. how you look at it e.g. cup half full or empty)
5. Each day, find the joy in simple things (do what makes you laugh out loud/grin)
6. Begin and end your day with gratitude (appreciate someone or something)

About NJC Therapy Practice

NJC Therapy Practice aims to help their clients use their unique inner strengths and passion to take control of their lives. They offer a variety of life-enhancing and holistic programmes that are tailored to your individual needs incorporating the following approaches:

• Life coaching
• Hypnotherapy
• Educational Performance Programme
• Self Help Publications and Audio Recordings
• Hypnosis Meets Sports
• Specialisms: Stress management, weight control and performance management

To find out more about NJC Therapy Practice, you can visit their website, follow them on Twitter or send them an email

Photo Credit

Ian Kiragu

As part of our My Healthy Heroes pilot project, we worked with two fourth grade classes in St Kitts to highlight the importance of healthy eating.

As part of this project, we sought to use creative ways to consolidate what students learnt in our sessions. Therefore, one of the tasks we gave students was to write either a short story, rap or poem featuring one of our My Healthy Heroes characters.

Today, we’re delighted to share a few of the short stories with you. We hope you enjoy them.

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A Mangolicious Dream

By: Rainier Martin

In the night, Amelia ate her dinner. Afterwards, she went to sleep, to wake up the next morning.

When Amelia was finally asleep, she had a great dream. There were characters, Miss Mangolicious and her healthy fruit and vegetable friends.

Miss Mangolicious and her friends, Tommy Tomato and Potato Head Jed were on a great mission.

“We have to save Amelia!” exclaimed Miss Mangolicious.

“Amelia is suffering from a severe case of Lack-of-Healthy-Eating-itis” said Tommy Tomato.

“We need to meet Ameilia at her usual eating spot right now. Quick, to my Mangolicious Carriage!” exclaimed Miss Mangolicious.

“There she is, sitting under the shady trees,” said Potato Head Jed.

“Amelia!” shouted Miss Mangolicious.

“You need to eat healthy foods,” said Tommy Tomato.

“Let us teach you the importance of healthy eating,” they all said.

“It is good to eat fruits and vegetables because you get a lot of vitamins and your bones become stronger,” said Potato Head Jed.

After all that Amelia learned in her dream, she started eating healthy from then on. Every day, Amelia eats fruits, vegetables and of course, mangoes!

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The Adventures of Professor Cornilious Cob

By: Kailynn Browne

 One day, the Sugary Drink Assassins and the Junk Food Villains were trying to take over Healthy Land.

Professor Cornilius Cob said, “Stop right there!”

The Sugary Drink Assassins and Junk Food Villains exclaimed, “We’re not going to listen to you!”

Professor Cornilius Cob needed some help from his friends. He called Miss Mangolicious, Captain Splash, Potato Head Jed and Mama Elegant.

Professor Cornilius Cob said, “We are going to fight them with facts.”

They all thought this was a great idea.

Professor Cornilious Cob said, “I am rich in vitamin B12, folic acid and iron.”

With that said, Frenchy the Frier disappeared into thin air.

“I have vitamins A, C, B6 and potassium,” said Miss Mangolicious. Donutter Dennis turned into dust.

Captain Splash exclaimed, “I am very important.” Juicer Jones turned into a puddle.

Mama Elegant exclaimed, “I have a beautiful colour which makes people want to eat me,” Greasy Greg Chicken Led turned raw.

After that day, the Junk Food Villains and Sugary Drinks Assassins went back to Unhealthy Land and never came back.

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We hope you enjoyed these two stories. Please do give our young writers a bit of encouragement by leaving a comment below and we’ll share more in our next blog post.

On 21^st February 2020, we were delighted to start the pilot for our My Healthy Heroes program with over thirty wonderful, enthusiastic fourth-graders from the Immaculate Conception Catholic School (ICCS) in St Kitts.

Our My Healthy Heroes program aims to educate and empower children to make healthy choices by tapping into their creativity to highlight the importance of a healthy lifestyle in a fun and engaging way.

This pilot project with the ICCS aimed to test our resources and characters (Healthy Heroes, Sugary Drinks Assassins and Junk Food Villains) and determine whether our approach would be effective at educating children about healthy eating and more importantly facilitate a change in their behaviour.

Getting Ready for the Pilot

For six months, we worked closely with the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund and teachers at the ICCS to develop a collection of resources that would align with the school curriculum, particularly with the healthy eating classes currently being delivered to fourth graders as part of Health and Family Life Education (HFLE).

The resources we developed were based on three types of characters.

My Healthy Heroes. A group of characters that represent fruits and vegetables, for example, Miss Mangolicious and Professor Cornelius Cob.

Sugary Drinks Assassins. A collection of characters that raise awareness of the dangers of sweet drinks such as the Soda Pop Sniper and Juicer Jones.

Junk Food Villains. A set of characters that educate children about the impact that junk food has on their health (Greasy Grey Chicken Leg, Zerger the Harmburger etc.)

Using these characters, we then went on to develop a lesson plan for teachers, a set of information cards, badges, fridge magnets, activity sheets (food trackers, drinks trackers, food groups, word searches, mazes etc.) and a series of data collection sheets (questionnaires for teachers, students and parents).

We also explored ideas for how we could make classes engaging, encourage children to critically analyse the importance of a healthy lifestyle and introduce creative ways for children to demonstrate what they have learnt.

Through a series of brainstorming meetings, we decided on introducing two creative assignments.  The first would be to ask students to write a rap, poem or adventure story based on our characters and what they have learnt about healthy eating. Their creative writing would then be used to create a healthy eating anthology which students can have as a keepsake but most importantly can be used to educate other children about healthy eating.

The second assignment would be to bring their creative writing to life using stop motion animation. In this activity, students will develop a short animation that will communicate a healthy eating message.

Delivering the Pilot

After months of planning, we were really happy to implement our ideas and began on a sunny Friday in February with two fourth grade classes. Our first session with fourth-graders was what we called week 0, a pre-assessment session.  During this session, we introduced students to our project and were thrilled at their response. They were excited, enthusiastic and very keen to learn more about My Healthy Heroes – a great start. We also took some basic measurements – height, weight, body fat and waist circumference – of each child and asked each student to complete a questionnaire to find out more about their eating preferences and what they knew about healthy eating. We also gave students a food tracker and asked them to make a note of everything they ate over the following seven days.

Prior to this session we sent students home with a questionnaire for their parents to further explore their eating habits and identify any challenges that parents may have in introducing healthy eating practices at home.

Right now, we’re still analyzing this information, but so far this data has been very insightful. We’ll report back on this in a future blog when all the data has been analysed.

After our pre-assessment session, we visited the school for a further four sessions where we used our resources to discuss the following with students

• Food groups and healthy eating
• Healthy vs. unhealthy eating
• Fruits and vegetables
• Colour categories of fruits and vegetables
• Healthy drinking
• The dangers of sweet drinks

We also gave students their assignment of writing a story, rap or poem based on their selected character (either a Healthy Hero, Sugary Drinks Assassin or Junk Food Villain) and were very impressed at the quality of the work they submitted. The raps were excellent, the stories were creative and the poems were engaging whilst maintaining a healthy eating message as the foundation of their work.

They also had to present their piece to the class and all we can say is ‘wow!’  Our fourth graders came prepared. Some students had memorized their raps and had carefully planned how they would recite their piece so that it was engaging and fun. They really did a great job.

Due to the coronavirus, the school the term ended early, so we’ll be continuing our work with fourth graders in the next month or so.

Next, they’ll be working on bringing their assignments to life with stop motion animation and we’ll be doing a post-project assessment to get their feedback on the project.

What We Have Learnt So Far

So far, we have been extremely impressed with fourth graders retention of the information that we have taught them over the past few weeks. They remember a lot and every week they have been able to recall the information they learnt the previous week.

Our characters have been extremely important in getting children excited about learning about healthy eating and improving their retention of the information. They love the characters and were excited to receive the information cards, badges and fridge magnets, and many of them wore the badges to class every week and wanted to be associated with a Healthy Hero and not a Junk Food Villain or Sugary Drinks Assassin. This suggests that if healthy foods are made cool, we can entice children to gravitate towards healthy options.

An issue that we identified was the need to properly explain the harms of unhealthy eating and in a way that resonates with them. There didn’t seem to be an appreciation of the long-term effect of unhealthy eating and through our discussions with them, we felt that because of this they didn’t see unhealthy eating as something that would impact them significantly. So, we tried to strike a balance of being honest and informative without causing any unnecessary fear, the aim was to be empowering.

Children are honest and overall they did say that they would try to make healthy choices but if they had to choose between certain foods, they would still choose the unhealthy option only because they felt it tastes better – so trying to explore tastier ways of preparing healthy food is a must if we are to change children’s eating habits.

Children were also very perceptive, they realized that they tend to make unhealthy choices because it’s easy in terms of it being accessible and they see it on TV all the time. One student said to us, if he had a food tracker all the time, it would remind him to eat healthily. He genuinely just forgets and doesn’t think about the choices he makes during the day when he buys snacks.

A project like ours needs to be long-term, children need constant reminders and nudges to make healthy choices or else the high volume of marketing of unhealthy foods will capture their attention and influence their behaviour.

We have a lot of work to do in the field of Public Health to compete with the food industry and by expanding this work, we hope that we can make a small contribution to getting children excited about healthy food and therefore encourage them to make healthier choices.

Coming up Next

In our next blog, we’ll be sharing fourth-graders stories, raps and poems with you. They did a great job!

COVID-19 is starting to make its way over to the shores of the Caribbean. We are sure you’ve been bombarded with a lot of information so we won’t add too much more but simply share some useful information from the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) and Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and Wellness.

As of 11^th March 2020,  PAHO reported the following number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Caribbean

• The Dominican Republic: 5
• Jamaica: 1
• Martinique: 3
• Saint Barts: 1
• Saint Martin:2

What is COVID-19 and what you can do at work, home and in public to prevent infection

Jamaica’s Ministry of Health and Wellness has prepared some very useful resources to help the public understand what COVID-19 is and how you can protect yourself, your family and your colleagues. You can read these below:

What is COVID -19?

Measures You Can Take to Protect Your Home

Protecting Your Workplace

Protecting Yourself When You’re in Public

Conclusion

Before we go, we just wanted to stress the importance of seeking information from reputable sources which would be WHO, PAHO and your countries’ Ministries of Health, to remain calm and to pay special attention to your elderly family members (those who are over 60) and those with non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory disease as these two groups of people are at a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 disease if exposed.

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