Background and the need for points4life

Manchester has some of the worst health in England, including one of the lowest life expectancy in the country. While Manchester is doing much to try to rectify long standing socioeconomic deprivation, there is a clear need to take a radical new approach to changing the health related behaviour of Manchester residents.

The primary aim of points4life is “To improve health and tackle health inequalities in Manchester”.

Objectives

The objective is to recruit 20-25% of the Manchester population, although we expect based on research to be able to achieve 40% to participate in the scheme over three years, plus 20% of those commuting to the city.

The key behaviour change outcomes that the programme is seeking to influence are:

• people are more physically active
• people eat a healthier diet,
• people maintain a healthy weight;
• people stop smoking;
• people limit their alcohol consumption to nationally recommended levels;
• people take up screening opportunities offered through the health service.

Evaluation

Evaluation will be an intrinsic part of the programme, which has significant capacity to capture data about the behaviour of participants. The points collected, where, when and for what, will tell part of the story; this will be backed up by independent external evaluation comparing changes for participants in the programme to changes in a control group.

Funding

Manchester will receive £4.6M over the next three financial years from the Healthy Town Challenge Fund. Manchester will match these funds within these timeframes through revenue funds and in terms of investments into initiatives that will be directly linked with the points4life scheme.

The funds invested will:

• Provide a large scale scheme that will produce the required impact which will enable the programme to generate the required interest from all stakeholders, which in turn will enable the programme to be a long term success.
• Provide a solid management platform from which a wide scale rollout will be possible.
• Inject value through the public sector initiatives which will improve their performance and will feed the private sector partners through points redemption.
• Enable the launch of a unique virtual gym exercise programme which will encompass cycling, walking, and all forms of exercise classes and work place exercise.
• Provide high quality research and evaluation to measure the effectiveness of points4life to create a sustainable change in lifestyles in targeted populations.