Lancashire Healthier Places: Building healthier communities together

Lancashire Healthier Places is a two-year initiative focused on promoting healthy weight and creating healthier environments across Lancashire. Delivered by Food Active in partnership with Lancashire County Council, the programme aims to increase capacity within the Public Health department, with a strong emphasis on promoting healthier weight across the county.

The programme builds on the foundation of Lancashire’s Healthy Hearts Strategy and lessons learned from the Pennine Lancashire Healthier Places, Healthier Future childhood obesity trailblazer. It focuses on three key workstreams: System Leadership, Business Growth and Development, and Social Movement.

System Leadership is about bringing together elected members and officers from various departments – including planning, housing, community services, climate, and health – to work collaboratively on policies that support healthy weight. By encouraging the adoption of district-specific Healthy Weight Declarations, this workstream ensures that public health is considered across all areas of local decision-making.

Business Growth and Development is aimed at engaging local food businesses through the Recipe 4 Health scheme, which provides practical nutrition support, guidance, and training. This includes an online healthier catering training module, one-to-one support for businesses to pilot healthier food and drink options, and a set of monitoring and evaluation tools to measure the long-term impact of the scheme. The goal is to help businesses offer cost-effective, healthier choices while ensuring their sustainability.

Social Movement focuses on empowering children and young people to have their voices heard on local food issues. Campaigns have already been delivered in Rossendale, Pendle, Preston, and Morecambe, exploring critical themes such as microplastics in the food chain, access to healthy food, school food standards, and food poverty. The creative outputs from these campaigns will be used to advocate for policy changes that reflect the concerns of young people, ensuring their views are at the heart of future decisions.

Together, these workstreams demonstrate the power of a whole-systems approach to tackling health inequalities. By working across sectors and engaging communities, Lancashire Healthier Places is creating the foundations for a healthier future – where everyone, regardless of where they live, has the opportunity to achieve a healthy weight and live a long, healthy, and happy life.

For news and updates on Lancashire Healthier Places, click here.