Activating Knowledge Exchange: A new University Civic Partnership involving practitioners, academics and students in the development, delivery and research evaluation of the pilot Bloom+ programme – a new social inclusion and healthy eating intervention

Bloom⁺ is a pilot for a scalable, innovative, community-focused intervention tackling obesity, malnutrition, low-nutritional literacy, poor well-being and social isolation in deprived communities.

Initially developed in Walsall one of the UK’s most deprived areas, where 68% of adults are living with overweight and obesity, it delivers practical multidisciplinary group workshops and 1-1 support beyond the standard remit of current Tier-2 weight management services, and includes support for people from diverse ethnic backgrounds which comprise 29% of the local population.

This Seed funding will enable the establishment of a formal partnership between the emerging CIC Bloom⁺ and the University of Leeds School of Food Science and Nutrition (FSN), with the aim of supporting excellence in KE for health improvement, research impact and student education.

The funding will enable meetings/travel so that FSN staff and students (led by Dr Sally Moore) can collaborate directly with practitioners and service users to co-design Bloom⁺. Together we will develop clear learning, knowledge and skill outcomes for participants and their families, underpinned by behaviour-change theory and culturally appropriate, motivating and socially engaging activities and resources which will include those developed by the research team based at FSN.

Project aims

Aims are to: (i) establish a new civic KE partnership between Bloom⁺ and Leeds University that brings together practitioners, academics, and students to co-produce/design and deliver the Bloom⁺ programme; and (ii) generate learning and preliminary evidence from this collaboration to underpin a future NIHR PHR-funded research evaluation supporting service commissioning (NHS).

Impact

Initially supporting 100 Bloom+ participants, this funding will catalyse this new programme and academic research partnership work towards long-term national health and economic benefits via tackling obesity , poor diets and reducing existing health inequalities.

Acknowledgements

• We would like to acknowledge the following research volunteers for their contributions to intervention co-development and event delivery: Rahimah Kaleem, Chabeli Delgado Lo, Liv Chessell, Joungmin Lee, Stephanie Clarissa, Riya Patel, Lucy Richardson, Yuqian Lin, Hanyue Zhong, Tha Prak, Talia Garfield, Ilina Patki, Andrea Cereceres Aragon, Li Qianhui, Ramakrushna Behera and others.

• Thank FSN staff for their support of the co-development sessions and the event delivery: Afreen Rahman, Dr Katherine Markwell, Vicki Richardson and Jenna King.

• Thank you to the Global Food and Environment Institute Seed Funding, which made this project possible, and to the Fud Manager Dr Sarah Dennis for time and support.