The new Bradford bid to tackle obesity as early as primary school

In October the same year, the National Obesity Forum published figures showing that health-related problems for seriously-overweight children and adults was costing the nation £4.2 billion a year.

The estimated cost in Bradford was put at £142.6m, rising to £158.3m a year by 2015.

A month later, 13-year-old Bradford schoolgirl Imogen D’Arcy was found hanging. In the hand-written note left behind, she said she disliked herself because she was “fat and ugly”. Nine days later, Imogen died in a hospice.

There is now a proliferation of health and fitness projects.

Last year, the T&A reported the success of a Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, Do it! (MEND) ten-week programme for 24 families with overweight children, organised by Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust. Five more programmes were commissioned.

Earlier this month, the T&A reported that Bradford City player Zesh Rehman was supporting the Department of Health’s Change4Life campaign, aimed principally at Bangladeshi, Pakistani and West African people, deemed to be at highest risk from obesity.

Now, Graham Morgan is eager to launch a radical health mentoring project in Bradford primary schools called HE:RO. The acronym stands for Health Engagement: Real Outcomes.

Mr Morgan may be remembered as one of the pioneering football development officers who, between 1983 and 1989, worked at Marley in Keighley. A friend of Sir Bobby Robson, the late England manager, Mr Morgan’s other claim to fame is that he later signed up David Beckham for a well-known brand of football boot.

His passion for sport broadened into wider health issues as a result of a severe kidney problem that he developed and the breast cancer that struck his wife, Deana. She runs the DM Academy in Shipley, where Kimberley Walsh, of Girls Aloud, was a pupil.

Mr Morgan says: “If 10,000 Bradford schoolchildren were each to take only one point off their body mass score, the NHS would save more than £70m. What I am proposing is preventative – as opposed to sending kids to expensive summer fat camps.”

Mr Morgan is proposing to find qualified, fit adults aged between 19 and 24, train them and recruit them for primary schools as health mentors and role models to combat health problems stemming from bad diet, lack of exercise and low self-esteem. He aims to run the HE:RO project through Keighley-based Evolve Health, a new, not-for-profit social enterprise company of which he is one of three directors.

Mr Morgan is also involved with two other companies, Evolve Sport and Evolve Education. The first, formed in 2003, develops sport, PE and dance practices in schools. Evolve Education, based in Birmingham, was formed in 2007 and offers extra vocational training to teachers.

These two companies have around 100 full-time or part-time teacher coaches who work in about 250 schools in England and Wales; income derives from payments by schools and fees from college courses.

He says: “Obesity is the biggest cause of premature death and cancer. The problem is everybody is trying to cure it; but it’s too big to cure. Less than one per cent of the NHS budget of £98 billion is spent on preventative medicine.

“The aim is to establish a healthy, fit, sporty, specially-trained mentor, one per school, to inspire kids and attack inactivity and obesity at source.

“We would like to do a ten-school HE:RO pilot in Bradford. Bradford is the logical place because it’s had this bad publicity as ‘fat city’.

“There are 25,000 primary schools in the country: this is how big the market is. If HE:RO takes off, we could create work for thousands of people in the 19-to-24 age group.

“All the bits are there. Bradford could take the lead. The Bradford and Airedale NHS Trust has asked for an outline business case. I gave a presentation to Bradford Council in February and I’ve written to Councillor Kris Hopkins (Bradford Council leader).”

Will the movers and shakers of ‘fat city’ respond? Mr Morgan waits with interest.