Projects and Activities

Community Roundtable 1

A Community Roundtable was organised by CC, attended by over 100 people from various organisations, in January 2024 to:

1. Celebrate our progress so far and showcase some of our outcomes.
2. Network with community groups and partners
3. Work with the community leaders and professionals to identify the top healthcare priorities and gather your ideas for co-created solutions that we can work on together.

 

Keynote Talks

Dr Fatima Zakia

Dr Christine Burt

Dr Ceiline Benoit

 

Interviews

Joy Krishnamoorthy, Lead on Flourish

Marion Gibbon, Interim Assistant Director of Public Health, Birmingham City Council, Public Health Division

Mohammed Shaikh, Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement Cross Cutting Theme Lead

Suzanne Cleary, Chief Officer, Strategy and Partnerships, BCHC

Tony Kelly, Diabetes Ambassador / Activist

Amy Maclean, Development Lead, Maternity and Children, for the Ladywood and Perry Barr Locality Partnership

 

Community Roundtable 2

Community Connexions organised the second Roundtable in this year which was attended by multidisciplinary organisations and community members. The Roundtable ended up with rich discussions around mental health, children and young people and wider determinants of health. This work will be further built by deeper discussions in three specific working groups in July.

• Community Clinic at Qadria Trust (Sparkbrook):  13 children were screened for Type 1 Diabetes.
• Community Clinic at Aspire and Succeed (Lozells): 31 children screened for diabetes type 1 from the South Asian background.
• Community clinic at ILEYS (Smethwick): 25 Somali children screened for diabetes type 1. One child came out to be positive with no diabetes family history. Mother was grateful for the study participation as the child was hospitalised a few days later as his symptoms got worse.
• Community Clinic at Nishkam Centre (Handsworth): 28 children screened for diabetes type 1 from mixed communities with additional BMI checks provided by NHS nurses.
• Community clinic at Refugee Alliance (Northfield): 6 children were screened for diabetes type 1 from the Syrian refugee families.
• Community clinic at OSCAR Birmingham (Edgbaston): 14 children from the communities with sickle cell & thalassemia were screened for diabetes type 1 at the Edgbaston Community Centre
• Community clinic at Refugee Alliance (Erdington): 32 children from Afghani, Syrian, Kurdish communities were screened for diabetes type 1 at Six Ways Baptist Church Erdington.
• Community clinic at Ashiana Community Project: the latest community clinic, where 15 children were screened for ELSA study from South Asian population.

 

 

This was an interactive session with a group of families from various social & ethnic backgrounds to learn about some of the barriers regarding research involvement and recruitment. This was done in collaboration with the University of Birmingham to add some valuable feedback to the ELSA study which is screening children for diabetes type 1.

• Focus group at Refugee Alliance: Syrian refugee families
• Focus group at Oscar Birmingham: Black / Caribbean / African families
• Focus group at William Wilson Turner Foundation: Black / African / Nigerian families
• Focus group at New Heights Community: White British families with children of special needs
• Focus group at Aspire & Succeed: South Asian families

 

• Listening event at Refugee Alliance: there were 4 listening events organised by RA at various venues with Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Romanian, Pushto, Syrian and Black Caribbean African
• Listening event at Saathi House: this is an only women centre, predominantly South Asian
• Listening event at ILEYS Community: a group of Somali families attended this CC listening event.
• Listening ‘on the go’ Handsworth Library: this was done by holding a stand at Handsworth library and engaging with the public and visitors randomly. A good mix of people gave their feedback on RedCap which was on our Ipads. This was a Christmas celebration hence there was good footfall on the day.

• Community Health Checks event: CC facilitated a community health check event at Chinese Community centre, organised by a group of volunteer GPs working based with Modality Partnership at Bellevue medical centre. Around 100 people attended the event and received the checks. Like BMI, Dermatology, Cardio-vascular counselling, rheumatology, smoking cessation and so on.

• Simmer Down Arts Festival: the team was delighted to attend the festival in Handsworth Park, Birmingham, where they offered free health checks to all attending, which covered: diabetes, blood pressure, BMI, cancer awareness and lifestyle counselling.