Better Health For All

Last summer parkrun and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) joined forces to create #parkrunpractice, an initiative to get more people active and volunteering. I was quick to sign my practice up as I had been a regular parkrunner for the previous year. parkrun (with a small p) is a free, weekly timed 5k walk/run held most Saturdays across the country at 9am. The volunteering opportunities are plentiful; want to simply cheer then have a go at being a marshal or come last and tail walk? Take some photos, scan barcodes, guide a blind runner, or pace someone to a time. There is a role for everyone and no experience is required.

The idea of the collaboration is for general practices to register to become an official ‘parkrun practice’ and forge close links with their local run. There are many ways primary care clinicians can encourage parkrun as a beneficial activity for improving mental/physical health and social interaction within discussions around lifestyle. We have noticeboards and TV screens in the surgery waiting rooms explaining what parkrun is and regularly post on our social media channels about what the benefits can be.

The first step in becoming a parkrun practice is to contact your local parkrun. To help you locate it, there is a handy map on the parkrun website showing your nearby runs. You can email the run directing team and a lot of the runs have facebook, twitter and/or instagram accounts, and are easily contacted via these methods too. I approached one of Heslington parkrun’s run directors and asked if they would like to collaborate with us as they were 1-2 miles from a few of our sites. They were very keen and I signed us up via the RCGP website; certificates were emailed, printed and proudly displayed in all of our waiting rooms in no time.

We held a ‘parkrun takeover’ in March of this year, which I organised along with some of my GP colleagues and one of the run directors. We filled the volunteer roster with over 30 of our staff, patients and friends of the practice. We involved the local Clinical Commissioning Group (Vale of York CCG) by promoting the event in the weekly CCG bulletin and they helped spread the word through their twitter feed. On the day we had Nigel, the Clinical Chair of the CCG, chasing down Dan, the CCG cancer and end of life lead. It was fantastic to see clinicians from different practices across the patch joining forces to celebrate the benefits of parkrun. The York Integrated Care Team (YICT) are closely linked to the practice and several of their nurses and carers took part in volunteering and running on the day.

On the day over 200 participants ran or walked Heslington parkrun in the pouring rain. Despite the awful weather, there were smiles and high fives all around. It takes energy and enthusiasm to organise a takeover but I would encourage all practices to sign up and give it a go as the feedback has been fantastic across the board, one of many messages we received:

Priory Medical Group you were amazing -so many volunteers and runners, full of joy and enthusiasm, and in those conditions! Incredible! Inspirational!

To celebrate the first anniversary of the launch of parkrun practice, pledge to parkrun hopes to get 1,000 GPs to take part in a parkrun on 1 June 2019.

On a personal level, I remember being really apprehensive attending my first event after just graduating from a couch to 5k program the previous month. I needn’t have been because everyone was encouraging and it was very inclusive. I now love parkrun because on a Saturday morning for two hours I get to be me; not a doctor, not a mum, just me! I meet my pals on the start line, try my best during a 5k run and grab a coffee and a catch up afterwards. Every week I meet and chat to someone new, maybe before the run I’ll talk to a ‘parkrun tourist’ from Shrewsbury or a runner might see me struggling in the last kilometre and encourage me on. I was a working mum without any regular time out for exercise, struggling to balance everything, and parkrun gave me important headspace and kickstarted me to get active again.

The parkrun practice initiative can provide benefits to all aspects of health. I have seen some of my patients with mental health problems improve their energy levels, confidence and self-esteem thanks to couch to 5k and parkrun.  The physical health benefits of a regular 5k walk or run are clear to see. Social prescribing is on the rise and parkrun is one of many ways we can reduce the need for lifelong medication. It offers the chance to improve health and wellbeing and also encourage social inclusion within a local community.

Written by Dr Abbie Brooks, GP partner at Priory Medical Group, York. To find out more about the Royal College of General Practitioners’ parkrun practice initiative click here. To find out more about parkrun – the free, weekly, timed 5k – or to locate your nearest event, click here. Lastly, you can find out how parkrun began by reading this blog  by parkrun founder Paul Sinton-Hewitt from the Better Health For All archives.