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** 15 May 2024
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** UK
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** Wales: Illegal vapes sold to children in toy shops (#1)
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** Tributes to Medway public health director and former Olympic fencer, James Williams (#2)
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** Cash incentives may help men lose weight, research finds (#3)
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** Young children with persistent severe obesity could have half average life expectancy, study finds (#4)
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** UK
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** Wales: Illegal vapes sold to children in toy shops
Illegal vapes are being sold alongside cuddly toys and action figures in toy shops, trading standards has said.
Over the past few months, the authority in Swansea said it had seized more than 140,000 illegal vapes.
A new survey by Action on Smoking and Health Wales (Ash) found more than half of secondary school pupils who vaped were likely to be using illegal products, which bypass UK regulations and can contain significantly higher levels of nicotine.
The Welsh government said it was “very concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children” and was working with the UK government to tackle the problem.
Trading Standards officer Rhys Harries said in Swansea about two-thirds of the calls Trading Standards get from the public are now about vapes being sold to children, or illegal vapes.
A survey of more than 12,000 secondary school children in Wales, which Ash Wales said was the largest of its kind in the UK, suggested 45% of those who vaped couldn’t get through the school day without it.
The Ash report found 7% of children across secondary school reported regularly vaping, but there are concerns about the level of addiction among those who do.
The survey also suggested teenage girls were more likely to vape than boys.
By Year 13, the survey recorded 17% of girls reporting to vape, compared to 10% of boys.
The Welsh government said vapes should “never be used” by children or people who did not already smoke.
“We are working with the other UK governments to tackle youth vaping and reduce the appeal, availability and affordability of vapes to children through the Tobacco and Vapes Bill,” said a spokesperson.
“This Bill will enable us to regulate the flavours and contents of vapes, their packaging and where they are displayed in shops so that we can prevent them being promoted to and accessed by children. From 1 April 2025, we also plan to ban single use (disposable) vapes due to their significant environmental impact and because they are clearly linked to the recent rises in vaping in children.”
Source: BBC News 14 May 2024
See also: ASH Wales youth vaping survey 2023 ([link removed])
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** Tributes to Medway public health director and former Olympic fencer, James Williams
Tributes have been paid to one of the county’s most prominent public health experts following his death.
It has been announced that James Williams died in hospital after a short illness - he was in his late 50s.
The former soldier worked as Medway Council’s director of public health for seven years - and helped shepherd the Towns through the pandemic.
His ambition was to improve community health and wellbeing and under his leadership his team supported tens of thousands of residents through the multi-award-winning A Better Medway programmes.
He will be remembered for his leadership in Medway and across Kent in leading the response to Covid.
His knowledge, expertise, drive and direction ensured the council and partners were able to keep people safe - his work helped save many lives.
He was instrumental in bringing the South East’s first Covid testing centres to Medway in the winter of 2020 offering targeted community testing for those without symptoms.
Source: Kent Online, 14 May 2024
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** Cash incentives may help men lose weight, research finds
Financial incentives of up to £400 alongside text messages could encourage men living with obesity to lose weight, research has found.
The research, presented at the European Congress of Obesity (ECO), involved a year-long trial involving 585 men living with obesity from Belfast, Bristol and Glasgow. They were randomly assigned to one of three groups: text messaging with financial incentives, text messages only, or the control group. Thirty-nine per cent of the participants were from a lower socio-economic background, while 40% had two or more long-term health conditions.
Those assigned to the group that received texts with financial incentives were sent motivational messages and healthy eating tips. They were also told that £400 would be transferred to them at the end of the trial, but they would lose money if they did not achieve a weight loss target.
Fifty pounds would be taken away if they did not lose 5% of their body weight after three months, £150 if they failed to lose 10% of their weight after six months and £200 if they had not maintained the 10% weight loss after a year.
The study found that the men who received the financial incentives alongside the text messages lost the most weight, at 4.8% of their body weight. This compared with the text message group alone losing 2.7%, and 1.3% for the control group.
Prof Pat Hoddinott, of the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions Research Unit at the University of Stirling, who led the study, said they hoped the study would be adopted by the NHS, adding that men who were living with obesity “helped design the structure of the incentives and helped us write the text messages”.
Source: The Guardian, 15 May 2024
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** Young children with persistent severe obesity could have half average life expectancy, study finds
Children who are severely obese could have just half the average life expectancy if they don’t lose weight in adulthood, according to a study.
Research suggests that a severely obese four-year-old boy has a life expectancy of 39, half that of a boy the same age with a healthy weight in the UK.
The modelling, by Stradoo GmbH, a life sciences consultancy in Munich, used data from 50 existing clinical studies – with more than 10 million participants from across the world – on obesity and obesity-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular issues.
The study measured severe obesity based on BMI Z-scores. These indicate how strongly an individual’s BMI deviates from the norm for their age and sex, with higher values representing higher weight.
The variables the study looked at included the age of obesity onset, duration, severity, and a measure of the irreversible risks.
The research found that early onset of severe obesity in childhood increased the likelihood of developing related co-morbidities such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
For example, a four-year-old child with severe obesity who doesn’t lose weight had almost a third (27%) chance of developing type 2 diabetes by 25, and a 45% chance by 35.
A quarter of children aged 10 and 11 in England are living with obesity, and worldwide 159 million children are obese.
Source: The Guardian, 15 May 2024
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