Redbranch aims to change young people’s behaviour by helping them to understand the implications of their lifestyle choices, and helps schools create healthy lifestyle environments.

*Bring this to your community: Contact - Rebecca Kilbane, rkilbane@changenation.org*

The need

An increasing number of children in Ireland are making poor lifestyle choices resulting in chronic health problems.

Only 19% of Irish children eat fruit or vegetables more than once a day, while 39% eat sweets on a daily basis and 26% consume soft drinks. These factors have all contributed to an increase in the prevalence of obesity in Ireland.

Government and citizen sector-led campaigns have failed to tackle the troubling reality because they failed to remove the barriers to healthy lifestyle choices including a lack of education about health related issues. Finally most Irish schools continue to offer a limited range of physical activity options based on traditional competitive team sports, discouraging increasing numbers of children to drop out of physical activity

The solution

Redbranch has adopted a dual strategy focused on education and environment. Redbranch began by conducting lifestyle surveys with thousands of people across 40 schools. Many insights from these surveys have help develop health templates that are now used in 30 schools.

In order to further educate the public David has organized education workshops for over 25,000 key stakeholders. To change the environment, RedBranch enacted several strategies to help schools create healthy lifestyle environments.

First they began by connecting schools with suppliers that can help with the transition to a health-promoting environment. In 60% of schools in the test region, soft drinks vending machines have been replaced with water vending machines.

Additionally school fruit breaks have been introduced in primary schools, and student–led fruit micro business in secondary schools where students sell fruit to peers with profits financing new physical exercise alternatives.

In 2009 Redbranch teamed up with the Healthy food company to create ‘The healthy school café’. ‘Parents for Health’ is a new RedBranch initiative building a community of healthy parents within the UK & Ireland. RedBranch is has begun to educate corporate business about health by offering education workshops, training courses and weekly newsletters.

How it works

RedBranch fight obesity and promote health by helping people to have a healthy diet and be physically active. Our work includes:
Parents for Health:
An online initiative that helps parents to promote healthy lifestyle in the home

Promoting healthy schools:
Helping schools to promote healthy choices

Corporate consultancy & education services:
Helping promote health in the workplace