Understanding Winter Health Challenges

Hello Ani, hi, thank you so much for taking the time to share with us your insights on just health and well-being over the course of the year, in all seasons. So firstly, are you able to tell us a bit more about yourself and the role that you have in the Bracknell Forest community? Yeah, I live in Bracknell Forest and I work in the Bracknell Forest public health team. I have led on a number of well-being programs and work with very diverse communities. The most recent project we had a World Café, so we work with with the Hong Kong New Arrival company, residents and Nepalese populations and the East European residents as well. So that's my most recent work, as well as other work strands that we've been given in public health. Lovely, thank you. So we're just going to move on to questions about just health and wellbeing in the colder months. So firstly, how does winter affect our overall health and wellbeing? I think generally that we've been working with a number of communities that, you know, lacking of the sunlight that impact on their wellbeing. So certain vitamins being recommended, promote that, you know, using NHS guidance for them to absorb enough vitamin E, sorry, vitamin D. And so that's, you know, one of the, and also people suffer from sort of more depressions because of lacking of physical activities during the winter time. And yeah, just generally being less active, I think that will impact on their well-being. Thank you. And what do your clients find the most challenging about looking after their health in winter? Yeah, obviously, you know, with the elderly and also the, you know, the young and the old, they're more vulnerable in catching flu and others with respiratory illnesses. So that's something to look out for and encourage immunisations during that period. you