Offer free swimming to help the nation’s health, MPs told
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People across the country should be offered free swimming to help drive up the health of the nation, MPs have heard. The House of Common’s Health and Social Care Committee heard that public health – the part of the health system involved with preventing disease and promoting health – has been “decimated” in recent years but there are a number of personalised approaches which could help improve people’s lifestyles.
Professor Sir Anthony Everington, a GP and former chairman at Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group, told MPs a personalised approach could mean telling a patient to get a dog rather than putting them on weight-loss injections. He highlighted how in Tower Hamlets, east London, women and girls aged 16 and over, and men aged 55 and over, can access a free swimming programme.
Sir Anthony said: “I ask the question, actually, why couldn’t this happen in every swimming pool in the country that, on the whole, (are) substantially empty quite a lot of the day?. “It is the added services that are really important.”. On weight loss injections, he added: “The drive now for everyone to have mounjaro and all these injections is enormous … we have no idea the long-term effects.
“Yet again, we’re seeing biomedicalisation and the drive, whereas actually, going back to that personalised approach to an individual – it might be that what somebody needs is a dog to walk every day, that is the thing that’s going to get their weight down, get them motivated to change their lifestyle.”.
