As we head into 2018 you may be planning to be a bit more active, but I don’t know about you I often need a bit of encouragement from likeminded colleagues to turn plans into reality, to keep me going beyond the first few days in January!
2018 is of course the NHS’s 70th Birthday year, it’s pretty amazing to think it’s been going since 1948. Establishing the NHS was a hugely ambitious plan that’s stood the test of time ensuring everyone has access to good healthcare. Ensuring it survives another 70years so that it continues to serve our families along with ourselves when it’s needed most is something that I don’t think we can take for granted, I think we all have a part to play in its future.
Significant birthdays can provide us with an opportunity for reflection and a few of us on twitter including Nicola Jackson (@NicolaJackson13) a commissioner in Cumbria, Catherine Wilson (@WilsonCat) a mental health nurse working at NHS England got tweeting about how we could give the NHS a present in 2018...
We thought "What better present than making a commitment to do our bit to keeping ourselves active in 2018?".
So the idea of a #NHS1000miles challenge was born.
The challenge is simple, over the next 12months we’re planning to make a note of our activities whether it’s walking, running, cycling, swimming etc and it will be our ‘gift’ to of a 1000miles to the NHS.
We’d love some friends to join us and people such as @antonytiernan @DavidTaylor60 @sprod_karent @4Adsthepoet @sandicarman @simonenright @NRCUK @profchrisham along with many others have already joined in! Everyone is welcome to give their gift of a commitment to increased personal activity to #NHS70
You can tweet your progress using #NHS1000miles, join the free Strava challenge by searching NHS 1000 miles or use any other creative method, as a Children’s Nurse I’m rather partial to progress sticker charts!
WeCommunities will be building one of thier clever Twitter tools to help us tweet, track and add up our progress from January.
Simplye tweet #NHS1000miles then the number of miles and the activity you've done, feel free to share a picture too, it might be a screenshot from your activity app or you enjoying your activity, here's an example:
Throughout the year there’ll be mini-challenges to help motivate us, January is the @RedRunEveryDay challenge in support of @MindCharity, the Mental Health Charity. So if you’d like to you can kick off 2018 by doing #RedJanuary for #MentalHealth. Importantly please don’t be put off by the ‘running’ bit, purely walking a bit further will count too! We want everyone to feel this is achievable, so feel free to do it as a team or even a family challenge!
Perhaps in 2018 you could try out a ParkRun, this is a free weekly timed 5K challenge, they take place around the country and are a great start to a Saturday morning, there’s also a junior Parkrun challenge to help get children active too. They are always looking for volunteers to help out occasionally too!
Over the year ahead, let’s together give the NHS the best collective birthday present we possibly can! Please spread the word, join in and encourage others to join in too.
Here’s to a slightly more active 2018, I hope you’ll join us! Fun, encouragement and motivation in the year ahead guaranteed!
Kath Evans, is a Children’s Nurse who leads on improving experiences of care at NHS England and tweets as @kathevans2
With thanks to @Healy160991
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