Avondale Leisure Centre is pioneering the concept of a community ‘health hub’, stripping away the barriers of a traditional club M
alcolm McPhail, CEO of Life Leisure – the leisure trust formerly known as Stockport Sports Trust –
is on a mission to get public health commissioners to think differently. “The first thing a GP will ask you when
you go to see them is: ‘How are you feeling?’ It’s a qualitative question, because improved health – the positive impact of an intervention – is judged qualitatively by the individual. Do they feel better? Has their life improved? The GP will then tick a box and that’s when it becomes a clinical statistic. But 90 per cent of the time that clinical statistic is based on a qualitative answer from the patient. “We have reams of qualitative data from
the interventions and programmes we run, all of which evidences exactly this sort of impact – the real life stories from people whose lives we’ve changed – but if you put that in front of the commissioners, they simply dismiss it out of hand. “And yet, by not acknowledging
qualitative feedback – by focusing only on quantitative, clinical outcomes – they end up not knowing what they want to commission, because they’re using a model that’s not applicable to the outcomes they’re looking for. They simply don’t have a model to measure physical activity within a community. “In the meantime, the clinical data is already there to prove beyond any
August 2014 © Cybertrek 2014
doubt that physical activity improves your health: the more you do, the more your health will improve. What the commissioners need to get their head around is that it’s all good – quite simply any exposure to physical activity which means the individual becomes more active than they were before is going to improve their health. End of. Don’t keep asking us to prove it. Don’t keep telling us there’s a lack of evidence. Help us solve the problem – don’t just throw it back as our problem – because then we can make you look good as commissioners, because everyone will be physically fitter and healthier. “I get angry when they say the fitness
sector has no place on a health and wellbeing board; there should be exercise specialists on every single health and wellbeing board. We just have to convince them we’re neutral enough that we’ll be there to shape the health of the whole borough, not just to look after our own business interests.”
CHANGING THE FOCUS He continues: “We’re our own biggest enemies though. We shoot ourselves in the foot because we set ourselves up to cater only for the 13 per cent of people who already use our gyms, and that just reinforces the commissioners’ view that we’re too focused on fitness and body image.”
McPhail was therefore keen to try a
new approach, and the trust’s Avondale Leisure Centre was identified as the ideal test-bed: five years ago it had just 500 members and was losing £170k a year.
“We had nothing to lose,” says McPhail. “The centre was earmarked for closure and it was the last throw of the dice.” He and his team came up with the
concept of a local ‘health hub’ in which they did “the complete opposite of everything that’s been done in this industry”. The physical environment within the centre was changed: all mirrors removed, partition walls brought in to offer privacy while exercising, bariatric chairs introduced, and an AlterG anti- gravity treadmill acquired to help larger individuals exercise. The programming was also overhauled, with new schedules introduced that used the pool for water- based activities and that put classes such as Legs Bums Tums in prime-time slots. “It was very unsophisticated in its
approach – just a case of stripping away everything that could act as a barrier to people being active,” says McPhail. Unsophisticated perhaps, but at the
same time a great example of fresh thinking. “In a way, Avondale isn’t really a health club,” adds McPhail. “It’s almost like a self-help centre where we talk to members about things like discipline: they must be ready to work hard towards their goals. They also
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital 33
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