KENWYN NICHOLLS, MD

ON OCTOBER 28, the Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA), in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, hosted its Wellness in the East 5K Walk/Run and Health Festival. The festival was a feature event of the ministry's TT Moves, a national campaign focused on reducing risk factors for non- communicable diseases (NCDs) by encouraging changes in behaviour, more specifically on healthy eating and regular exercise.

Earlier in the year, the North-Central and North-West RHAs hosted similar festivals, and in March tender notices went out for procurement of equipment to outfit six TT Moves mobile units to include health and food models, medical equipment, and physical education equipment. In addition, Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh recently revealed that programme-appropriate signage was in the pipeline.

TT Moves was derived from the regional initiative, Caribbean Moves, the latter conceptualised at a breakfast meeting attended by Caricom heads of government at the Third UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases in New York, September 2018. This meeting, co-sponsored by PAHO, the UWI Chronic Disease Centre, the Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha) and the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, was also attended by more than 25 ministers of health and other interested parties as far-flung as the Pacific.

The main objectives of the conclave were to celebrate the 11th anniversary of the 2007 Port of Spain Declaration (PoSD): Uniting against the Epidemic of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases, and to explore how the 14 points of action agreed to in the declaration - and now obviously floundering - could be reinvigorated. Caribbean Moves became the chosen vehicle.

Essentially, Caribbean Moves is a health promotion programme aimed at changing the Caribbean culture towards a healthier lifestyle by encouraging the general population to adopt healthy eating habits, engage in regular exercise, and participate in routine age-appropriate health checks.

These ambitious initiatives were endorsed by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, at the UN general meeting, and supported by the Caricom Secretariat, as well as the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), in partnership with Carpha, the former committing in excess of US$175,000 to the project, and the latter, the executing agency, to develop a multi-sectoral, whole-of-society, socially-inclusive and gender-driven regional framework to implement Caribbean Moves.

Since its introduction, five Caricom states have launched 'Moves' initiatives: Barbados, TT, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and St Lucia.

On April 5, 2019, Mr Deyalsingh used his annual World Health Day address to launch TT Moves, describing the initiative as a 'national health and wellness movement that will galvanise action by all towards a health revolution in TT.' Activities such as described in the opening paragraph were initially stymied by the pandemic (declared over by WHO as a public health emergency in May), but now evidently in full swing.

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