We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new Project Assistant, Jay Robinson, to the team. Jay brings extensive experience from the health and non-profit sectors, where she has worked with underserved communities, including the elderly.
Fiona Zhang and Genesia Pemberton, our Youth Health Advocates, are proud to announce the launch of their Healthy Start Healthy Heart campaign.
We are thrilled and honored to announce that we have received a certificate of appreciation at the prestigious 3rd Annual SKN Moves Awards Ceremony!
The Joseph N France Hospital, in Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis, recently achieved a significant milestone by becoming certified as a baby-friendly hospital as part of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI). This certification is a testament to the hospital’s commitment to providing quality healthcare services to mothers and newborns.
The BFHI is a global program launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1991. The initiative aims to promote and support breastfeeding as the best way to feed newborns and infants. The program recognizes hospitals and birthing centres that implement the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding include guidelines for staff education and training, the promotion of breastfeeding as the best way to feed infants, and providing support to breastfeeding mothers. The International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes is a set of guidelines aimed at regulating the marketing of breast milk substitutes, such as infant formula, to ensure that mothers are not discouraged from breastfeeding.
By becoming a certified baby-friendly hospital, the Joseph N France Hospital has committed to implementing these guidelines and supporting mothers in their breastfeeding journey. This will have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of babies and their mothers.
Breastfeeding has been shown to have numerous health benefits for both the baby and the mother. For babies, breastfeeding provides essential nutrients and antibodies that protect them against infections and diseases. Breastfeeding has been linked to a lower risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), childhood obesity, and certain types of cancer. It also promotes bonding between mother and baby and can have a positive impact on the baby’s cognitive development.
For mothers, breastfeeding can reduce the risk of breast and ovarian cancer and help to regulate their menstrual cycle. It also promotes bonding between mother and baby and can help to reduce the risk of postpartum depression.
By promoting and supporting breastfeeding, the Joseph N France Hospital is helping to tackle non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in St. Kitts and Nevis. NCDs, such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease, are significant health concerns in the Caribbean region. Breastfeeding has been shown to reduce the risk of NCDs in both the mother and the baby.
In addition to the health benefits, becoming a certified baby-friendly hospital will also have a positive impact on the hospital’s reputation and patient satisfaction. Mothers who receive support and guidance on breastfeeding are more likely to feel satisfied with their hospital experience and are more likely to recommend the hospital to others.
In conclusion, the Joseph N France Hospital’s certification as a baby-friendly hospital is a significant achievement that will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of mothers and babies in St. Kitts and Nevis. By promoting and supporting breastfeeding, the hospital is helping to tackle NCDs and improve patient satisfaction. This achievement should be celebrated and serves as an inspiration for other hospitals and healthcare facilities in the region to follow suit.
On Saturday 4th February, we were so happy to feature on Conversation with Our Kids, a new radio show on WINN FM which aims to give children a voice and is thus a series that is for kids, created by kids.
We had a great time on the show which started with some fun ice-breaker questions and then we transitioned into exploring healthy eating with hosts Kadique and Xzavia. During the interview we touched on the harms of overconsuming sugar, why children should eat fruits and vegetables, the long-term impact of unhealthy eating and the work that we at Lake Health and Wellbeing do to educate children about healthy eating.
You can watch the recording of the episode above and we would like to say a big thank you to WINN FM, the Conversation with Our Kids team and our wonderful hosts, Kadique and Xzavia, for their warm welcome and for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important topic.
Lake Health and Wellbeing has joined 59 other health-related organisations from across the world to call on Simon Stiell, the Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to rethink Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of COP27.
COP27 is the United Nations Climate Change Conference, and it brings world leaders together to not only discuss, but to take action towards, achieving the global climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The sponsorship of the event by Coca-Cola, one of the world’s leading plastic polluters and thus a major contributor to climate change, is at odds with the objectives and ethos of the conference. Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the conference gives them an influential voice on the policies and strategies being developed to tackle climate change, which is a clear conflict of interest, and it gives them a very high-profile platform on which to promote their environment- and health-harming products.
We are calling on Simon Stiell to limit the influence of health- and environment-harming industries by developing strict guidelines on the types of companies that sponsor future climate change conferences. This will ensure that companies do not influence the policymaking process and that the public’s interest, and not corporate interests, remains the focus of events like these.
The open letter, including the list of signatories, can be downloaded below.
On Thursday 8th September 2022, Sagicor formally launched their new Helping Hands corporate social responsibility programme and we are absolutely delighted that Lake Health and Wellbeing, as well as The Deaf Heart Project from Barbados and Servol from Trinidad, have been selected from over 200 NGOs in the region to benefit from this programme.
You can read all about this programme in the press release below. You can also download remarks delivered by Mr Paul Innis, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Sagicor Life, during the launch event here and a fact sheet here.
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Bridgetown, Barbados: Regional financial services entity Sagicor has embarked on a new corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative, Helping Hands. The initiative will see the company working to uplift three non-governmental organisations (NGOs), following the submission of more than two hundred applications from various charities across the region, during nominations held in June. After a careful selection process, The Deaf Heart Project in Barbados, Servol Life Centres, Trinidad and Tobago and Lake Health and Wellbeing in St. Kitts and Nevis were chosen to work with the insurer until year-end. The programme will see Sagicor lending both tangible and intangible support to the organisations in support of their projects.
Each NGO speaks to one or more of Sagicor’s four CSR pillars of Health, Community and Youth Development, Education and Sport. “The Deaf Heart Project” is a non-profit organisation serving the deaf community in Barbados and across the Caribbean with an aim to aid in the empowerment and development of deaf persons to bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing world, to afford each deaf individual with a better quality of life, while Servol is a community-based social impact agency oriented towards building the capacities of local communities to meet their needs through the development and implementation of various human development programmes. The organisation focuses on early childhood care, life training development via its adolescent development programme (ADP), teacher training (RTRC), education and skills training, and parent support via its Parent Outreach Programme (POP). Finally, Lake Health and Wellbeing is a public health NGO that was founded to tackle the high rate of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in St. Kitts and Nevis. The organisation aims to improve the health and wellbeing of the local, regional, and online community through research, public health interventions, health education events, campaigns and by offering public health services to small organisations.
Speaking on behalf of the company’s President and CEO during the media launch, Sagicor’s Executive Vice President and General Manager for its Barbados operations, Paul Inniss said the organisation was pleased to support NGOs in this way.
“We received hundreds of submissions from organisations that serve all sectors of our Caribbean community. Two things were very apparent: the Caribbean is overflowing with persons whose passion it is to alleviate the pain and suffering of others and there are many individuals and groups in need of support so there is room for everyone to indeed lend a helping hand.”
He added, “NGOs, charities and service organisations do much of the important work needed to move our societies forward and it is often the valiant efforts of regular people who are brave enough to take up the mantle of a cause, a plight or bring awareness to a national or global issue. With initiatives like Helping Hands, Sagicor is desirous of leading and reinforcing the power of generosity in making a difference in the lives of others. We’re excited about this initiative and are hopeful that you will journey with us as we support and help tell the stories of the NGOs we have selected.”
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Sagicor is a leading financial services provider in the Caribbean, with more than 180 years of history, and has a growing presence as a provider of life insurance products in the United States, with over US$1.4 billion in total annual premiums. Sagicor has over 4500 employees and offers a wide range of products and services, including life, health, and general insurance, banking, pensions, annuities, and real estate. Sagicor’s registered office is located at Clarendon House, 2 Church Street, Hamilton, HM 11, Bermuda, with its principal office located at Cecil F De Caires Building, Wildey, St. Michael, Barbados.
Contact information:
Ingrid Card
Vice President – Group Marketing, Communications & Brand Experience
Office – 246.467.7500, Cell: 246.230.5315, Fax: 246.426.7907
Email – Ingrid_Card@sagicor.com
Sagicor Financial Corporation, Wildey, St. Michael, Barbados
On the 4th July 2022, we were delighted to join the Essence of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation and SIS Inc on Good Morning SKN to discuss the work that our charities are doing in St Kitts and Nevis.
This interview was part of efforts by Change for Charity, a new fundraising initiative in the Federation, to highlight the work of NGOs and encourage the public to support these worthy causes.
During the interview, we explored holistic health, and some of our projects, including You’re Sweet Enough, our work on fibroids, My Healthy Heroes and our COVID-19 and NCDs project. If you missed this episode of Good Morning SKN, you can watch the recording below.
As part of our efforts to build the capacity of non-profit organisations in St. Kitts and Nevis as well as the Eastern Caribbean region, we hosted a fundraising webinar on Saturday 28th May.
This topic was selected as we recognise that one of the biggest challenges that non-profits in the Caribbean face is limited resources to fulfil their aims and objectives. To address this challenge, we hosted this webinar to explore how organisations can develop an effective fundraising strategy that facilitates the generation of sustainable income.
Our guest speaker for this session was Emily Legg, Director of Fundraising at Myeloma UK, and she provided some good guidance on how non-profits can develop and implement an effective fundraising strategy and explored sustainability, monitoring and evaluating fundraising efforts and more.
Sustainable income is of particular importance as this is the only way that non-profits will be able to survive in the long-term. In this webinar, we learnt that to attract sustainable incomes requires a strategy and a scientific approach of analysing donors and funding sources. It requires a strategy that is regularly reviewed and that includes multiple streams of income.
If you missed this session, you can watch the recording below and if you have any questions about any of the content presented, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.
In April 2022, the Healthy Caribbean Coalition hosted an excellent symposium on food policy in the Caribbean and during this event we were delighted to hear about work conducted in Trinidad and Tobago to evaluate the link between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and the development of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This work was part of a project conducted by the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy entitled “Empowering healthcare decision-makers to achieve regional needs in sugar-sweetened beverages policies in Latin America and the Caribbean: building a framework to evaluate the disease burden and the cost-effectiveness of available interventions; and estimating the disease burden in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago.”
As part of this project researchers aimed to determine the burden of disease that is attributable to the consumption of SSBs and also the cost of the illnesses that are related to SSBs.
The team behind this project have very helpfully put together an infographic to share their findings and this can be downloaded from their website here, but in summary, here are some of the key findings:
Their study found that in Trinidad and Tobago, the overconsumption of SSB is linked to 15,000 cases of
overweight and obesity in adults and 11,700 cases in children and adolescents as well as 44,100 cases of diabetes, 2000 cardiac disease cases and 1500 renal failure cases.
The study also determined that Trinidad and Tobago spends 156 million TT Dollars per year to treat diseases associated with excessive consumption of SSBs.
This work is very significant as it adds to the growing evidence highlighting the negative impact that SSBs have on the health of the public. This work is useful in that it quantifies both the health and economic impact of SSBs and thus gives policymakers an idea of the magnitude of the impact of SSBs and how many lives can be saved and improved if we can reduce SSB consumption.
Instituto de Efectividad Clínica y Sanitaria. The hidden side of sugary beverages in Trinidad and Tobago.
Alcaraz A, Gittens-Baynes K, La Foucade A, Balan D, Perelli L, Cairoli F, Beharry V, Gabriel S, Laptiste C, Espinola N, Palacios A, Comolli M, Augustovski F, Bardach A, Metivier C, Pichon-Riviere A. Dec 2020, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Available at: www.iecs.org.ar/sugar and https://sta.uwi.edu/fss/heu/fiscal-policy-taxation-sin-taxes
