Living in a ‘Fat Swamp’: How poverty begets obesity and how can we stop it?

The Staffordshire University’s Centre for Health and Development (CHAD) and the Faculty of Public Health are delighted to invite you to the next webinar of our series around health and social inequalities, with Dr Patrick Saunders, carolan57 Ltd and Honorary Professor of Public Health Staffordshire University. 

An adequate and nutritious diet is essential to a healthy, productive and fulfilling life. Access to a healthy diet is a fundamental right and is predicated by a range of factors including personal knowledge and choice, convenience, availability, quality, cost, and social norms. The evidence is clear that deprivation compounds all these factors with poorer people buying more unhealthy foods with fewer healthy components while being exposed to circumstances that make such ‘choices’ inevitable. Analyses of the cost of ‘more healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ foods show that the former are more expensive, and that this gap had widened.  For poorer social groups avoiding the expense of cooking entirely is a cost effective way of sourcing energy. Research in Sandwell West Midlands has clearly shown its population has the dubious distinction of living simultaneously in a ‘swamp’ of unhealthy, readily accessible and cheap takeaways, and a ‘desert’ of healthy options. 

In this webinar, Patrick will explore the consequences of this and options for intervention.

Patrick is a Consultant in Public Health and Visiting Professor in Public Health at the University of Staffordshire. He has held service, research, teaching and management posts with the WHO, European Union, Public Health England, local government, the NHS and a number of Universities. Following retirement from the NHS he has maintained active research, teaching and consultancy commitments to a range of bodies including the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of Public Health, and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. He has been involved in addressing health inequalities his entire career and continues to support a range of public and voluntary sector bodies including The Trussel Trust, FoodCycle, the ‘Is it a crime to be poor’ Alliance based at the University of Birmingham and the Socialist Health Association.

This one hour-session will include:

• Chair's welcome
• Expert discussion of how poverty shapes diet and contributes to obesity, and implications for intervention. Dr Patrick Saunders, carolan57 Ltd and Honorary Professor of Public Health Staffordshire University.
• Q&A
• Chair's concluding remarks

For queries, please contact Fiona McCormack (fiona.mccormack@staffs.ac.uk).