Around 40 people attended this Community Food and Health (Scotland) half-day event on June 18 in Glasgow. The audience heard from:

Avril Blamey, consultant, who carried out research for CFHS in 2014. Conclusions from the research included:

• There was evidence of consistent good practice by practitioners (community chefs, trainers etc) when planning and running cooking skills activities
• The cooking activities reviewed by the research, are targeted towards, and appear to be reaching low-income and vulnerable communities in Scotland

For more information see Avril’s presentation and the full research report and executive summary.

Lizzy Hammond, Health Improvement Senior, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Rebecca Reardon, MSc Human Nutrition student, University of Glasgow discussed the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Eat Better, Feel Better cooking skills programme which is currently being piloted. The programme is designed to address barriers to cooking such as time, cost and knowledge. Early results indicate that the course is helping to address these barriers.

Lizzy’s presentation is available.

Dr Ada Garcia, Lecturer in Human Nutrition, University of Glasgow highlighted research she carried out on the NHS Ayrshire and Arran Cooking skills programme. This showed that participants’ confidence to prepare new foods and use simple recipes was maintained a year after attending a short cooking course.

For further information see Ada’s presentation and her published research.

CFHS plans to complete a short guide for practitioners based on Avril Blamey and Associates’ research report. This will be available in Autumn 2015.

‘Useful information which will influence (my) practice.’ Event delegate

For more information contact kim.newstead@nhs.net