1. CCD Rounds: Sharing knowledge and scaling up action to bend the curve on diabetes

Cities Changing Diabetes is pleased to bring you the CCD Rounds: bi-monthly topic-specific live events that will provide inspiration for driving public health interventions. The CCD Rounds are a great opportunity to learn about diabetes and obesity prevention through real-world examples of health promotion, activities around childhood obesity and best practice policy initiatives.

We kick off 2023’s Cities Changing Diabetes (CCD) Rounds webinars in partnership with our guest from JOGG – an organisation showing how impactful, repeatable, and community-integrated initiatives can promote healthy living and prevent obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases at scale.

JOGG is an inspiring case study. The acronym stands for Gezonde jeugd, Gezonde toekomst, which translates to Healthy youth, Healthy future. For more than a decade, JOGG has orchestrated multi-stakeholder initiatives in more than 200 municipalities in the Netherlands. How does it do this? JOGG advocates a local approach in which parents and health professionals are supported by shops, companies, schools, and local authorities – all working in partnership to create healthy environments that help young people achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

PATTY SCHOLTEN, programme manager for JOGG, will share how the organisation is sustained through government funding, using top-ups from private companies and civil organisations. Patty will also share how JOGG’s whole-system approach works and how successful initiatives are replicated in new communities.

Watch the recording here.

The 13th CCD Rounds webinar was focused on practical experiences with developing social impact investments for obesity and diabetes prevention. The webinar was co-hosted by our global partner Dalberg, and shared experiences from two cities – The Hague (NL) and Aarhus (DK) - about how a social impact investment model can potentially fund interventions and reduce urban health inequalities.

Rimke Vos, Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at Leiden University Medical Center, shared her insights and learnings from the early stages of developing a social impact bond in the Happy and Healthy The Hague coalition in The Netherlands. 

Hans Uldall-Poulsen, special advisor to Dalberg and The Diabetes Prevention Investment Lab, reflected on the initial results from the first diabetes impact bond in Aarhus, Denmark. This innovative financial model utilises a results-incentivised payment structure, where investors receive loan repayment along with a premium payment only if specific targets are met. The programme has been in operation since February 2022 and is showing promising results.

Thanks to Rimke and Hans for a really engaging session on the rationale and process for creating social impact investment bonds to prevent diabetes. You can access the recording of the webinar here

The 11th edition of the Cities Changing Diabetes Rounds webinar was focusing on innovative financing models for diabetes prevention programmes and was co-hosted with the World Diabetes Foundation and Dalberg Media.

The event featured a panel discussion on partnerships for innovative financing models, the payment mechanisms, and how innovative finance models, specifically diabetes impact bonds are applied in both high and low resource settings.

Despite the financial cost of diabetes that amounts to 11.5% of global health expenditure, investments in prevention remain low. As a response, value-based healthcare, and partnership-based financing models are growing in popularity, aimed at preventing diabetes, high healthcare expenditures, and prioritizing best practices in how we measure, deliver, and pay for care.

Watch the recording  here.

The 10th edition of the CCD Rounds webinar was focusing on a novel approach to using football to improve the health for vulnerable groups. 'Football as Medicine' is a social, fun, and highly effective strategy for overcoming barriers to exercise in people at risk of type 2 diabetes or those already living with the condition.

The link between physical activity, sport, and health is widely acknowledged, and Football as Medicine provides a flexible and different way of engaging people in physical activity, delivering remarkable health effects in non-clinical environments. The approach is showing success in different cultural settings, having been rolled out in local communities worldwide, including the US, Portugal, Faroe Islands, Brazil, and Denmark.

Watch the recording here.

The ninth edition of the Cities Changing Diabetes Rounds was focusing on Madrid’s ALAS programme (The Alimentación, Actividad fisica y Salud – Food, Physical Activity and Health). The programme is creating behavioural changes and promoting healthier lifestyles among its citizens.

In Madrid almost half the adults and 40.9% of children between 3 and 12 are overweight. Madrid Salud (https://madridsalud.es) took action in 2011 and invested in an urban health programme centred on food, physical activity and health education, reaching people deemed at a higher risk of developing obesity and type 2 diabetes through workshops and other initiatives to encourage healthier behaviours.

During the webinar Madrid Salud, the city's government institution for public health, walked us through how families, communities, schools and businesses have been engaged and how more intensive interventions for people at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes are working in practice.

Watch the webinar and discover how the ALAS programme has raised awareness about the effect of nutrition and exercise on health, and the strategies being put to work to change unhealthy habits.

The 8th edition of the CCD Rounds webinars was focusing on the impressive and sustainable results at Center for Diabetes in Copenhagen. The session was discovering how good patient outcomes are being achieved through a one-stop-shop and centre of excellence model which has enabled lifestyle interventions, health monitoring, education and support packages to be delivered to at-risk and previously hard-to-reach groups in Denmark’s capital city.

Charlotte Glümer, Director of the Center for Diabetes presented the holistic model which puts the patient at the centre of their treatment to deliver lasting lifestyle changes. The Center has been a strong advocate for building networks among attendees which has paid off with outstanding retention rates and improved health indicators among vulnerable populations with a difficult track record of maintaining engagement. The center has education programmes, indoor and outdoor fitness classes, and a team of nurses, physiotherapists and dieticians who are committed to helping people improve their health.

Watch the recording here.

The seventh CCD Rounds webinar featured the new Health City Manager post-graduate course which has been launched at universities in Rome, and is supported by several cities in Italy. The webinar is an opportunity to hear from the experts behind the development of the course, created specifically to provide the knowledge, competences and abilities for a successful Health City Manager. The unique curriculum ensures students gain holistic and professional skills in public health management, sociology and psycho-sociology of communities, urban architecture and control in reducing social and health inequalities in the urban context.

Chiara Spinato, Director General of the Health City Institute and Head of training of the Health City Manager course for the Italian Municipalities Association (ANCI) at the Roma Sapienza University explains the rationale and ambitions of upskilling participants through this new course.

Watch the recording here

The sixth CCD Rounds webinar deep-dived into the creation of the ground-breaking social impact bond tailored to improve the lives of city-dwellers living with type 2 diabetes. The City of Aarhus in Denmark has secured investment, from outside traditional healthcare sources, to fund an immediate expansion of services with a concrete ambition to reduce high spending related to complications associated with diabetes. The new investment model will allow the city to accelerate superior interventions to reduce type 2 diabetes complications among citizens.

Otto Ohrt, Director of Public Health, City of Aarhus, explained why the city has chosen this route to expand its diabetes services and outlined why new ways to fund public services are an exciting opportunity. Hans Uldall-Poulsen, Senior Advisor, Dalberg Group, presented exactly what a social investment bond is and how it can be effective in enhancing health provision. Hans profiled the Aarhus model and shared how actors were motivated, how the health interventions will be implemented, and how the funding mechanism will work in practice.

Watch the recording here.

Our guest speakers introduced Children eating well in cities, the UNICEF roadmap to support nutritious diets and healthy environments. The roadmap outlines ways to tackle the growing prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity as well as malnutrition with a focus on urban contexts. Drawing on work from London, Cape Town and the Philippines we also learned about how engaging children and families in research using qualitative methods can help understand their “lived experience” and unlock new or different policy approaches to promote nutritious diets in urban settings.

Jo Jewell, Nutrition Specialist at UNICEF, shared how a strong conceptual framework can help break down the challenges, gaps and hurdles to ensure access to improved nutrition for children and their families. Corinna Hawkes, Professor of Food Policy at City from the University of London, shared how lived experience studies can help inform urban policy action in different settings to building healthier community environments for children and families.

You can watch the powerful and engaging session here

Discover how the health department in Bogota has been working with Gehl, an urban design practice, and the local Cities Changing Diabetes project team to identify the relationship between food behaviours and the urban environment. Learn about the foodscape concept, an environment comprised of food places, public spaces and public life that defines the food experience of neighbourhoods and communities. Get inspiration on how the combination of high quality public spaces and nutritious and accessible food offerings can create the right conditions for healthier food behaviours. The case was presented by Sophia Schuff, Project Manager from Gehl and Dr. Sara Valencia, Director of the District Education and Health Research Center in Bogota. Watch the recording here

The case was presented by Dr Sophie O’Connell, Operational Manager at the Centre for BME Health together with Alisson Tripney, Head of Community at Leicester City in the Community. Watch the recording here

Tune in on 29 April when Stuart Nelson, Vice President at the Institute for Spirituality and Health, Texas Medical Center, will guide us through an initiative that shows the power of co-creating directly with community stakeholders. Watch the recording here

Discover how a dynamic and versatile partnership delivers activities and projects co-created with Tingbjerg’s citizens to prevent diabetes. The case is presented by Paul Bloch from Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen. Watch recording here