We’re delighted to inform you that OH Services will be hosting another four-week course on the emotional impact of fibroids which starts on Wednesday 4th March 2020.

This course is aimed at women who have been affected by fibroids, professionals who would like to support and understand their clients better and family members and friends who would like to learn more about fibroids so they can help their loved ones.

The course will be led by Olivia Haltman who is an accredited Integrative Humanistic Counsellor and an Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapist.  She is also a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), EMDR UK & Ireland and BAATN (Black and Asian Therapist Network). Ms Haltman has over 10 years experience working in the mental health sector having worked for organisations like Mind and established her organisation to support people who want to develop their lives on a personal level and reach their best potential.

The Aim of the Course

This course will empower attendees, enabling them to

• Get an understanding of how fibroids affect your emotions and life
• Create a stepping stone to start a routine to work on their self-care
• Create their own self-care plan
• Learn how to support and understand others with fibroids
• Start a self-development journey to improve their general wellbeing

It will be interactive and include: a lecture, break out exercises, Q & A, guest speakers, homework, hand-outs and a Certificate of Attendance upon attending the full 4 weeks.

We’ve Teamed Up With OH Services

We’re delighted to have formed a partnership with OH Services. Those who register for the OH Services course will be able to claim a 20% discount on any of our services and products

More Information

For more information, you can visit OH Services’ Eventbrite page, visit their website or email us

On Friday December 13th 2019, The Healthy Caribbean Coalition CSO Regional Action Team for Childhood Obesity Prevention released the 2019 Sweet Beverages in the Caribbean Infographic Series: How much sugar is in your beverage? This infographic series is an update of the 2016 HCC Sugar In The Caribbean Infographic Series which showed the sugar content of some sweet beverages available locally.

The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is one of the major contributors to the obesity epidemic among adults and children. In the Caribbean on average data shows that 1 in 3 children is overweight or obese. The sugar content of one serving of many popular carbonated beverages and juices far exceeds the entire daily healthy maximum sugar intake for adults and children as recommended by the WHO and the American Heart Association (AHA).

This infographic series is intended to be an educational, awareness-raising tool which provides a snapshot of the sugar content of some of the drinks available in eight Caribbean islands: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. HCC congratulates the members of the CSO Regional Action Team for the development of these advocacy tools. National supporters include the Ministry of Health and Wellness in Barbados, Barbados Moves, the Barbados National NCD Commission, Saint Kitts and Nevis Moves and Trinidad and Tobago Moves. The work of the HCC would not be possible without the support of Sagicor Life Inc.

You can download the infographics below and find out more about the HCC and their work on their website.

On Tuesday 19th November, KMT Rising will be organising a public lecture on fibroids in Dominica. This lecture will focus on holistic approaches to tackling fibroids.

Attendees will be taken on a personal journey to womb-wellness, exploring some of the factors which contribute to the production and accelerated growth of fibroids amongst women, and the range of holistic strategies which can be adopted for more informed choices around health and womb-wellness.

Imani Sorhaindo, a qualified Holistic health practitioner, teacher and lecturer invites the audience to look at this growing global epidemic, and the need to raise more awareness amongst women, their families and health practitioners towards the elimination of this types of disease.

The event takes place at the UWI Open Campus in Roseau, Dominica from 7 pm to 8:45 pm. You can register for this event by visiting KMT Rising’s website.

About KMT Rising 

KMT Rising is a UK-based organisation that is dedicated to the optimum health and wellness of all women around the globe; ensuring that their personal, emotional and health-related needs are catered for through a range of bespoke holistic packages. They also provide very unique Fibroid products on sale internationally:

• Fibroid Assessment Check List
• So you have Fibroids – Next steps guide
• Get yourself checked for Fibroids guide

Website: https://www.kmtrising.com/

Email address: kmtrisingltd@gmail.com

On Friday 9^th August 2019, St Kitts and Nevis joined the Caribbean Moves family with the launch of SKN Moves.

Caribbean Moves is an initiative launched in 2018 that is based on the successful Jamaica Moves campaign and focuses on physical activity, healthy eating and age-appropriate health checks.

SKN Moves follows the launch of Barbados Moves and TT Moves at the end of last year all with the aim of tackling non-communicable diseases, which is now the major health challenge facing the Caribbean.

The launch of SKN Moves took place in Independence Square in Basseterre and was a whole-day event featuring health stalls, healthy food, exercise challenges and free health checks.

The formal launch ceremony began at 4pm and was chaired by Dr Hazel Laws, Chief Medical Officer, with remarks given by Senator Wendy Phipps, Senator with responsibility for health, and Dr the Honourable Timothy Harris, the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis. Additionally, special guest Dr the Honourable Chris Tufton, the Minister of Health in Jamaica, attended and discussed Jamaica Moves and its expansion into schools and workplaces.

With 83% of deaths in St Kitts and Nevis being attributed to non-communicable diseases, an effective approach to facilitating healthy lifestyle changes amongst the public is much-needed.

SKN Moves’ focus on physical activity, healthy eating and annual health checks can create a healthy environment that reduces the public’s risk of developing NCDs such as diabetes and heart disease.

During the formal launch ceremony, Dr Timothy Harris explained how they’ll be measuring the success of the campaign. He informed the audience that their objectives are to facilitate

• A 10% reduction in physical inactivity by 2020
• A 5% increase in the consumption of fruit and  vegetables
• A 5% increase in the number of people accessing one medical check-up a year
• An overall 10% reduction in the prevalence of NCDs by 2025

SKN Moves started this journey with a focus on physical activity and on Saturday 10^th August at 5am, a health walk was organised to highlight the importance of keeping fit and active.

We look forward to seeing what the future holds for SKN Moves and how the Ministry of Health aims to build on the three focus areas of the campaign. We wish them every success with this initiative and encourage everyone to get involved.

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.

On 21^st June 2019, the Healthy Caribbean Coalition hosted their second webinar in their childhood obesity series. This webinar series aims to empower organisations in the Caribbean who are advocating for the introduction of policies to tackle childhood obesity.

This webinar focused on the Caribbean experience of implementing front-of package nutrition labels (FOPL), a key strategy in tackling childhood obesity by ensuring that consumers are provided with a quick and easy of way of assessing the nutritional content of the foods they purchase so they can make healthy choices.

Speakers included:

• Fulgence St Prix, the Technical Officer at the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), who discussed the revision of the standard for the labelling of pre-packaged foods to include FOPL. He provided an overview of the consultation process, the timeline for the development of the standard, the next steps and recommendations for the standard’s successful implementation.
• Dr Fabio Da Silvia Gomes, Regional Advisor in Nutrition at PAHO, who gave an insightful presentation on the rationale behind the introduction of FOPL, the best strategy for assessing the most effective type of front-of-package label for Caribbean countries, compared different types of labels and summarised the evidence on the effectiveness of FOP.
• Dr E. Arthur Phillips, Senior Medical Officer of Health (NCDS), Ministry of Health and Wellness Barbados, who provided a health perspective
• Luis Galicia, Ministry of Health Uruguay, who summarised their experience of implementing FOPL explaining their strategy, the resources they developed, how they addressed imported products and the challenges they experienced
• Vonetta Nurse, Advocacy Officer at the Heart Foundation of Jamaica, discussed all the great work they’ve been doing to advocate for FOPL in Jamaica
• Lawyer, Nicole Foster,  who discussed the trade and practical considerations of FOPL as this is a major concern of industry who argue that FOPL may have trade implications. This presentation explored the WTO’s Technical Barriers to Trade agreement and how this agreement speaks to the balance between trade and protecting the health of a country’s population so that policies like FOPL are not more trade-restrictive than necessary.
• Maisha Hutton, the Executive Director of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition who summarised the work that the HCC has been doing to support the introduction of FOPL regionally

If you missed this very informative and insightful webinar, you can watch the recording below and for more information, please visit the HCC’s website.

We’re delighted to announce that our next set of chronic disease self-management courses will start in July 2019.

Following the success of our first chronic disease self-management course which ran from 2^nd April to 7^th May 2019, we will be hosting two more sets of workshops. The first will start on Tuesday 2^nd July and the second on Wednesday 3^rd July. Both workshops will be held at the conference room at the Ministry of Health in St Kitts from 5pm to 7pm.

The course is aimed at anyone living in St Kitts who is either living with a chronic health condition (like diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, fibroids, heart disease, arthritis, chronic back pain etc.), is caring for someone with a chronic illness, is at risk of developing a chronic health condition or who is interested in the topic and would like to learn more.

Participants will attend one session a week for 6 weeks and during this period they will be provided with the information, skills and knowledge to live well with their health condition. This will enable those affected by a chronic disease to take control of their health and wellbeing and not be hindered in any way by their condition.

Over the six weeks, attendees will be taken through key self-management techniques such as action planning, problem-solving, symptoms management, medication management, communication skills, pain management and more.  Additionally, attendees will have access to free health checks and relevant services to enable them to adopt a healthy lifestyle.

If you or anyone you know is living with a chronic disease or caring for someone with a chronic disease, then this workshop is just what you need.

You can register your interest by completing the registration form below and for more information or if you have a question about this course, please email us or call 765 8702.

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Please note: The information you provide in the form above will only be used to contact you about our chronic disease self-management course. It will not be passed on to any third party and you won’t be added to our newsletter’s mailing list. To be added to our mailing list, please click here.

On 25th April,  the pharmaceutical company Merck launched their new documentary, A Touch of Sugar, at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The documentary is narrated by the award-winning actress Viola Davis who has a strong family history of type 2 diabetes and who herself is pre-diabetic.

The World Health Organisation has reported that in 2014, 422 million people worldwide were living with diabetes. The majority of these patients, about 90%,  are living with type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes is now considered by many to be an epidemic and the film, A Touch of Sugar, delves into this chronic condition by telling the story of the many people who have been affected. The film features interviews with patients, family members, doctors, advocates and thought leaders to raise awareness of diabetes, its impact on society and the importance of focusing on underserved communities.

You can watch the trailer for the documentary below:

A Touch of Sugar Trailer from A Touch of Sugar on Vimeo.

A Touch of Sugar is part of Merck’s program,  ‘America’s Diabetes Challenge: Get to Your Goals’ which encourages type 2 diabetics to work with their doctors to reach a number of health goals.

You can reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by maintaining a healthy weight, eating a healthy diet and taking part in at least 150 minutes of physical activity every week. If you have diabetes, speak to your doctor about the lifestyle changes that you can make to ensure that you’re managing your condition effectively.

In St Kitts and Nevis, diabetes is also a major health challenge, you can read about this here

We have started facilitating regular chronic disease self-management courses. These courses have been developed by Stanford University and have been proven to help those living with chronic conditions such as diabetes live well despite their condition.

If you live in St Kitts and Nevis and would like to learn more about managing chronic diseases, you can register to attend our next chronic disease self-management course, by sending us an email.

Early in April 2019, the Task Force for Fiscal Policy for Health published their report ‘Health Taxes to Save Lives.’ This report explores the effect of taxing tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on the purchase and consumption of these products.

These products are the focus of this report because they contribute significantly to increasing a person’s risk of developing a non-communicable disease (NCD).

They explain that the introduction of well-designed excise taxes can significantly reduce the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and SSBs and as a result improve the public’s health, save lives and raise a significant amount of revenue that can be used to tackle NCDs.

In order to reap the benefits of taxing these products, the Task Force recommends that the imposed tax should be an excise tax (as opposed to a sales tax or increasing customs duty)  and the level of tax should be high enough to deter consumption from those in both high and low-income brackets.

“If all countries increased their excise taxes to raise prices on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary beverages by 50 per cent, over 50 million premature deaths could be averted worldwide over the next 50 years while raising over the US $20 trillion of additional revenues in present discounted value. Raising taxes and prices further in future years would save additional lives and raise even more revenues.”

The report stresses the importance of the taxation of these three products as a strategy for tackling NCDs as data has shown that 10 million premature deaths per year could be prevented by reducing the public’s consumption of tobacco, alcohol and SSBs.

The report also addresses industry’s opposition to taxation, which the Task Force describes as “flawed” and they further state that industry’s arguments against taxation are “false or greatly exaggerated, and none justify inaction.”

In the report, the Task Force takes each of industry’s arguments and addresses them showing why they are flawed, false or exaggerated. Industry’s arguments include:

• A decline in government revenue
• Loss of employment
• A negative impact on the poor
• Illicit trade, tax avoidance, and tax evasion

They also explain how industry has tried to influence and undermine public policy in unethical ways to halt the progress of taxation.  Industry has sought to confuse the public, censor scientific research on the harms of their products and have used other such tactics to disrupt work by public health officials and policy workers.

The report concludes with a call for countries to take urgent action to reduce the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and SSBs. The Task Force, at the end of its report, recommends the following:

• Countries should rapidly and significantly increase tobacco taxes and continue to raise taxes over time to make tobacco products less affordable, to reduce use, and to prevent unnecessary death and disease.
• Countries should rapidly and significantly increase alcohol taxes and continue to raise taxes over time to make alcohol less affordable, to reduce consumption, and to prevent unnecessary death and disease.
• Countries should actively implement policies directed at reducing consumption of sugar as it is a significant contributor to the rise in obesity, diabetes, and other associated noncommunicable diseases.
• Countries should design their health taxes to be easy to administer, hard to manipulate, and difficult to game.
• In addition to significantly raising health taxes in the short term, countries should improve excise tax administration and enforcement in order to reap the full benefits for health and revenues.
• The international community – including international financial institutions and UN agencies, governments, civil society, and the research community – should take action to support countries to adopt, implement, and significantly raise effective health taxes.

You can download the full below.

Today, Sunday 7th April 2019, is World Health Day. This year, the World Health Organisation is focusing on the topic of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) with the theme being ‘Health for All – Everyone, Everywhere.’

WHO states that “Universal Health Coverage means that all people have access to the quality health
services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship.”  They explain that  Universal Health Coverage includes the full spectrum of health services which encompass prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care.

Providing UHC is one of the Sustainable Development Goals and countries throughout the world, including St Kitts and Nevis are exploring how UHC can be achieved.

In recognition of the World Health Day theme we thought it would be useful to share this excellent interview from January 2019 with Chairperson of the St. Kitts and Nevis National Commission for Universal Health Coverage , Azilla Clarke.

In this informative interview we hear about the government’s plans for UHC. The discussion includes an overview of the major health challenges in the Federation, including non-communicable disease (NCDs), how we can address these and how UHC can contribute to tackling NCDs.

You can watch this interview below and happy World Health Day!

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Photo Credit: SKNIS