This Healthy Heart Grant project has now finished, read on for the project highlights.

The Problem:

There has been found to be a relationship between heart disease and family members. A family history of heart disease can increase your risk of developing heart conditions yourself. With the obesity levels in the UK continuing to rise, the need for this family focused health project became increasingly apparent.

Fusion Lifestyle already runs established cardiac rehabilitation and exercise schemes in Loughborough and from these identified the need for further interventions to support family health. It was identified that 94% of people within the current schemes have a heightened risk of heart disease later in life through their obesity levels, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia and type 2 diabetes.

The Project:

Fusion Lifestyles project, Family Heart Health, was a six-week prehabilitation programme that ran to support the families of clients who previously completed cardiac rehabilitation and exercise referral schemes. They identified participants from the previous scheme and offered them the opportunity to attend along with 2 relatives, who could be at risk of heart disease later in life.

Each session included one hour of physical activity, including gym inductions, gym sessions, badminton, circuit classes and a variety of group exercise classes. Followed by an hour of social discussion topics such as nutrition, mental wellbeing and lifestyle guidance. Health checks such as BMI, weight, blood pressure, activity levels, mood and attitude towards exercise, were carried out pre and post programme to measure the progress of the participants.

Project Highlights:

Family Heart Health communicated a message that exercise can be enjoyable and anybody can participate, with some adaptation and consistency it will benefit your health and lifestyle. Over 50% of the participants have been seen using the leisure centre for different activities after completing the Healthy Hearts programme. This is another way to show the success of the project through participants displaying the knowledge and confidence to attend different activities that they would not have previously. Participants felt more at ease having a familiar family member with them at the sessions and it helped to motivate them to exercise and improve their confidence. This Loughborough-based project also decided to incorporate CPR and AED training into the project for each cohort, teaching them vital skills for if someone was having a cardiac arrest.

Overall, this project successfully taught beneficiaries the importance of heart health, how to exercise safely, and how to lead a healthy lifestyle.