The Jewish community in Gateshead faces health inequalities experienced across all age groups. The wider determinants of health – such as poverty and deprivation, insecure housing and other specific cultural causes including less access to mainstream and social media health messaging – negatively affect health and wellbeing outcomes for this ethnically minoritised community.
For example, only 33% of local families reported ‘adequate’ opportunity for physical activity – contrasting with Sport England Local Insights reporting that 61.8% of Gateshead residents live physically active lifestyles.
Our flagship project, the Labriut Healthy Living Centre, strives to challenge and redress the balance by providing highly-acclaimed health and wellbeing programmes and education to the community in a culturally appropriate way.
With its in-depth understanding of the community and its cultural and religious norms, Labriut’s place-based approach aims to surmount challenges by identifying common themes and scheduling educational and awareness events for the community, in addition to other health initiatives such its ever-popular suite of exercise sessions and mother & baby drop-in.
It also acts as a single point of contact for external agencies, building trusted partnerships to improve access and outcomes.
Labriut has had a profound impact on its people’s level of access to health services and on reducing health inequalities and social isolation in the community, forming a key component of the JCCG’s operation.
Children enrolled for weekly
swimming lessons
Increase in child vaccinations
over 3 years
Adult exercise slots
filled annually
Exercise sessions
Emotional health & wellbeing
Nutrition
Home & personal safety
Education & Advocacy
Mother and baby clinic
Fitness Suite
Vaccination clinic
JCCG: Just what the doctor ordered
“As a local GP serving the community, it is so helpful to have the support and advice from Labriut. We work closely with Labriut to protect everyone from health related risks. It has been invaluable to collaborate on messaging and use local facilities to ensure that vaccinations and advice is as close to the community as possible, helping both the community and those of us who are serving people in the community.”
Dr Ruth Bonnington,
Bewick Road Surgery