Making health superheroes

Early LifeLab, which takes health messages and the science behind them into primary schools, has received funding from Southampton City Council to help tackle the issue of childhood obesity among schoolchildren in the city.

LifeLab at the University of Southampton has been running for 12 years as a successful programme for secondary school students that combines a hospital and school-based education approach, in which scientists and educators create experiences aimed at increasing scientific and health literacy among young people through raising awareness of the underlying science behind health messages.

Early LifeLab is a development of this approach for primary school children, recognising the opportunity of working with children earlier in their lives and reaching out into families. Following funding from Southampton City Council, the programme is being developed to tackle obesity among primary school children in the city over the next three years.

This project is a collaboration between the Public Health team at Southampton City Council, the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, the University Hospital Southampton, and the University. Both the Widening Participation and Social Mobility teams at the University have contributed direct funding alongside the Council.

Dr Kath Woods-Townsend, Programme Manager for LifeLab, explained: “Tackling obesity in children was already on our agenda at LifeLab pre-COVID, but the pandemic and its effects have brought the issue even more to the fore.

“Childhood obesity in the UK is a major public health problem. In 2019/2020, nearly one in four children in the first year of primary school were overweight or obese. Throughout the pandemic, these levels have got worse, highlighting the need for new approaches and we are dedicated to helping in our local community as much as possible.”

Debbie Chase is the Director of Public Health at Southampton City Council. She explained: “The opportunity for children in the city to have access to the LifeLab resources is very much in line with our work in early health prevention and education messages. Programmes like this are essential in helping our community recover from the pandemic and build positive outcomes for the future.”

The beginnings

Early LifeLab began development in 2014 as a collaboration with local schools and teachers. The primary phase of education provides a unique opportunity to work in a cross-curricular way, embedding health messages across the curriculum. The approach builds on the principles of LifeLab, but offers the educational programme to children in-school using ‘Flight Cases.’

The flight case approach helps teachers to deliver health-related teaching using scientific enquiry to explore the science behind the health messages. It supports behaviour change in children using a series of ‘teaching toolkits.’ There are a series of modules which span the primary phase of education and make the science behind the need for a healthy diet, physical activity and sleep accessible to children. These help them to discover why this matters for themselves, supporting children and their families in making healthy choices.

Donna Lovelock, the Early LifeLab Programme Lead, said: “We know this is an effective setting to reach a large population of children across all communities, and we provide all the tools teachers need to deliver health messages in an engaging way.”

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, LifeLab worked with local primary school children to design, develop and implement the successful COVID-19 Warriors programme with funding from the Department of Health and Social Care. The COVID-19 Warriors are now being transformed into Health Warriors.

The Early LifeLab programme will be available to all primary phase settings in Southampton.

“Working with young people to support the city’s recovery from the pandemic will be critical in helping local communities thrive,” added Kath. “We are delighted to be working with Southampton City Council on this important initiative and look forward to rolling out Early LifeLab to as many local schools as possible.”

Find out more: lifelabonline.org