Client: Lincolnshire Teaching Primary Care Trust

Project: ‘Rowed to Fitness’

Summary

The Lincolnshire Teaching Primary Care Trust (PCT) contracted By Design to design, develop and manage a Body Mass Index (BMI) & fitness data collation programme which measured various details of Year 7 pupils across all 63 state secondary schools in Lincolnshire, whilst encouraging participants to raise their levels of physical activity.

Objective

To collate all BMI data whilst providing an interactive and non-invasive point of delivery for the participants.  Similar collections of data for Year 6 and Reception had not yielded sufficient volumes of results to meet targets set by the National Child Measurement Programme and By Design were asked to increase the percentage of results obtained from the cohort to a level of 85% or above.

The programme also set out to establish data required for Physical Education and School Sport Club Links (PESSCL) as well as presenting a range of physical activity options for the participant pupils.

Solution

By Design utilised the knowledge they had gained from a similar pilot project, based in the District of South Holland, Lincolnshire, to create an interactive fitness and data collation workshop that visited government maintained secondary schools across Lincolnshire.

Making use of the hand-eye coordination board (BATAK), Concept 2 indoor rowing machines and venue race set-up and a number of other engaging pieces of interactive sports equipment By Design were able to provide a fun and non-invasive environment for the participants to take part in a number of fitness based activities.  Due to the exciting and appealing environment created, participants were less apprehensive of having their height and weight recorded leading to a high success rate of data collection.

Participants were also required to fill out a very short and simple questionnaire to help By Design obtain the extra data they needed to fulfil the requirements of the project, which were then collated to provide the evidence for the results and final reports.

Results

The project yielded above the 85% required results for the cohort across the county, coming into contact with circa 7,000 Year 7 pupils, and the total programme, including the submission of the final report, was completed within six months.

The PCT and County Council have subsequently used the results to support similar work they have carried out, including data comparisons on demographics and health and eating habits. It is hoped that the results will also support new physical activity interactions that the County Council and PCT are planning.

In addition, the project has also seen several school indoor rowing clubs created as a direct result of the workshop visits.