Wow! What a Year!

At the end of every year, we use the opportunity of one year coming to an end and being on the cusp of a new year to look back and reflect on our achievements. The reason why we do this is because, throughout the year, we can be quite critical about our progress and fail to recognise what has gone well – this can be very demotivating. So, every year we look at our achievements to bring in some balance, learn some important lessons and go into the new year with some positive energy.

This year has been an interesting one, as it was our first full year in St Kitts. For those of you who may not know, we were based in the UK and moved to St Kitts at the end of 2017. Our aim for 2018 was to explore the public health landscape in the Caribbean and to understand how we can make a useful contribution to improving the health and wellbeing of the citizens of St Kitts and Nevis, and the wider Caribbean community too.

It was a hard year, but it turned into one of the best learning experiences ever! We explored everything (from podcasting to webinars). It didn’t all work out, but our efforts helped us gain some clarity which has led to us developing a focused strategy for the next two years.

And so, with your support and encouragement we’re happy to say we had a good year and are proud to present you with our 2018 achievements:

1. We continued our work on fibroids and launched our fibroids self-care webinar series, published two fact sheets, one on fibroids and exercise and the other on the emotional impact of fibroids, we hosted 7 fibroids twitter chats with some amazing guests, joined forces with OH Services to begin to facilitate an online forum for women with fibroids and teamed up with Noire Wellness for a fibroids social media campaign for International Women’s Day.

2. We became a member of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition and supported their childhood obesity prevention call-to-action (petition) by recruiting volunteers to develop a four-part podcast series on childhood obesity and sought support from the public for the petition, gaining over 400 signatures from residents of St Kitts and Nevis.

3. We were invited to the Healthy Caribbean Coalition’s childhood obesity ‘Beyond the Call-to-Action’ event in Barbados where we took part in a panel discussion on the importance of alliances and collaborations in addressing critical public health issues.

4. We published a position paper on sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) taxation in St Kitts and Nevis

5. We formed a good working relationship with the Ministry of Health in St Kitts and assisted with their plans for World Cancer Day, Caribbean Wellness Day and Caribbean Wellness Week. Additionally, the Ministry of Health invited us to take part in their SSB consultation, the PAHO Health Promotion Consultation and their Chronic Disease Self-Management Programme.

6. We signed a new consultancy client, the FIT Wellness Centre, and assisted them in the development of their NCD Prevention Action Plan, preparing for their National Weight Loss Campaign and developing their new website.

7. We explored podcasting and interviewed some fantastic guests, but soon realised that we don’t have the time to host a weekly, nor bi-monthly podcast but will continue releasing episodes sporadically.

8. We obtained some media coverage and were featured on the NNC news, SKN Vibes, Times Caribbean and 31 Days of Business Ideas, and were interviewed on the Secret Birds podcast

9. We added a new area to our portfolio – Public Health Tech – to explore how we can bring technology and public health together by exploring tech based products and services to educate the public about their risk of developing disease,  to raise awareness of health issues and to provide engaging ways of communicating health messages.

10. We launched a Public Health Tech mini-project, the development of a Diabetes Risk Assessment Tool, and this tool went live in December 2018.

11. We launched our online shop, The Lake Shop For Good, which aims to promote a healthy lifestyle by selling products that remind us all to live healthily. Our shop also helps us to continue to do good in our community with all money raised going towards our public health projects.

We had a really productive year with some highs and lows, which helped us make significant progress through the many lessons we have learnt from them.

We’re very  much excited and looking forward to 2019, and we wish you all a happy New Year and a healthy, happy, peaceful and successful year ahead.