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| Andree Deane discusses how her new government relations firm, ADDed Value, hopes to effect change for the UK’s health policy—and the governmental challenges and opportunities the fitness industry faces in mainland Europe |
By Patricia Amend |
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Last October, with the blessing of the board of the Fitness Industry Association (FIA), Andree Deane stepped down from her role as Executive Chair to launch her own government relations firm, ADDed Value. Her goal: to help the UK's National Health Service shift its emphasis from illness treatment toward prevention in the face of the nation's looming obesity crisis. In the process, Deane hopes to establish herself as an effective lobbyist and win a seat in Parliament down the road.
Immediately, she lined up four clients involved in various aspects of sport, health or fitness, and hired a Parliamentary researcher, a Parliamentary events manager, and a full-time secretary. The FIA, of course, is one of those clients. A second is SkillsActive UK, a government endorsed and funded body responsible for standards of coaching across sport. A third client, Deane says, is in the wellness and health arena, which will help her bridge the gap between health clubs and healthcare providers. Working with clients along the spectrum will give her the ability to talk with many government departments whose funding has an impetus in these areas.
Deane's timing couldn’t be better. In December 2003, the government announced its £2.2 million Food in Schools (FiS) Programme, designed to combat childhood obesity. The Chief Medical Officer's Report, the UK equivalent to the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, was released in February of this year. In addition, in 2003, the government announced its biggest-ever initiative designed to turn Britain into a nation that enjoys exercise. It includes a £1 million publicity campaign to show how gardening, walking to work and even housework can help Britons to get fit.
Under the auspices of her new firm, Deane plans to expand the breadth of her service to the FIA, which she says, has a strong board that includes most of the CEOs of the big club chains in Europe. She is, for example, planning, on behalf of the FIA, a major conference in the Houses of Parliament to celebrate the Chief Medical Officer's Report and to give the industry feedback on its contents. The conference has been endorsed by Prime Minister Tony Blair, and speakers will include the Secretary of State for Health and the Chief Medical Officer.
In the following interview, she discusses the goals for her new firm, important changes in UK health policy, and opportunities in Europe at large.
CBE: What made you want to start your own firm?
AD: I’ve always wanted to be a politician, and stand for a seat in the national Parliamentary elections. Seven years ago, I did put myself forward for a seat, but personal reasons stopped me from doing that. I was lucky that the FIA offered me, five years ago, the opportunity to chair the organization and represent them in government. In doing that, I built up contacts and a reputation for effecting change in government departments, which has enabled me to work on wider issues as well as gym and health-club based activity. I felt that it was time, having set the FIA on a really strong political platform, to broaden my base of representation to the wider areas of sport, health and physical activity. At the moment, the government is looking to increase participation not just in health clubs, but also across the whole spectrum of different types and styles of physical activity. If I’m going into politics eventually, I thought I would like to represent a bigger portion of the sector.
CBE: What is your ultimate goal?
AD: I’d like to accomplish a reputation as a credible and professional Parliamentary lobbyist. I can now see that our government is on the brink of committing to a major strategic event in terms of funding physical activity projects. We spend about £7 million on the treatment of illness, compared to £600,000 on physical activity initiatives and prevention. Now, the government is beginning to shift more funds toward prevention. It may cause problems in the National Health Service while that shift occurs, but the NHS is beginning to see that, long term, doing this is essential to improving the nation's health overall. Years from now, when I retire from this industry, I’d like to say that I achieved something toward that change.
CBE: It would seem that the UK government is now at a critical juncture in terms of its health policy.
AD:It is. In order to achieve this, by one report, there will have to be a reduction in the spending on the treatment end. Everybody in this country moans about the National Health Service, and there may be a period during which the NHS doesn’t deteriorate but doesn’t actually improve while we effect this change. It’s a long-term strategy to save money and lives down the road. The Chief Medical Officer’s Report, issued this year presents an overwhelming case in terms of evidence for the health-related benefits of physical activity. You may say, everybody knows that. And yes, there is massive evidence that is US-based, and some European-based. And now, we have that evidence in the UK. The Prime Minister has put his support behind [the value of exercise], so we're on shifting sand now. Clearly, there is the opportunity to effect this change.
CBE: How will this change affect the fitness industry?
AD: There are now gradually emerging incentives, albeit small ones, encouraging people to exercise more. For example, the FIA has applied to the treasury for a series of tax incentives regarding gym memberships. There are also pilot projects in some parts of the country where free health club memberships are being given to people with various health conditions. In total we’ve got nine, three-year physical activity pilots going on right now.
CBE: Would you describe one of these pilot projects more in depth?
AD: The submission that I initiated on behalf of the FIA is now taking place in an area in East Yorkshire in the north of England. It is a very deprived coal-mining area with a population of about 300,000. Most of the pits have been closed for a long time, and it’s left the area destitute in terms of housing, services, and jobs. As you know, poverty goes alongside ill health. We found six doctors—general practitioners from all parts of this area—who agreed to prescribe various levels and types of exercise and sport, depending on the facilities that we got involved, for those people who were obese or sedentary or had ill health for one reason or another.
CBE: Are young people involved in some way?
AD:Yes. There are kids there without an education who have no place to go. One of the brilliant things about this particular project was that we combined money from the department of health with private sector funds from local supermarkets and from FIA members. We added those funds to money from the Deputy Prime Minister's Office, which funds regeneration in coalfield areas, and funded some training schemes to enable youngsters to train as fitness instructors.
We also got a local rugby club to start kids on rugby coaching courses. The college community centre trained some kids as basic level fitness instructors, and they went into the schools to teach exercise; they also taught people referred by their doctors. When we get to the end of this project, and we write up case studies, you will see that some of these kids that were no-hopers have completely changed. It's very exciting, but it's small. One million pounds invested in it—not very much. But there’s a lot of good will.
CBE: What role has the FIA played?
AD:The FIA gave my time free to this initiative. It took a long time to set it up, but now I just sit on the steering committee that manages it. That committee is composed of the health care authority, health care providers, insurers, and three members of Parliament, so we have a direct link back to government. It's a good model, and if it's successful, I hope that we can roll it out across the country.
CBE: In general, how far along are these projects?
AD: We’re a year into them, so when they finish in two years and they’re evaluated, one would hope that their results would initiate a national scheme in terms of free health club memberships for individuals with health problems such as diabetes, obesity, arthritis, back pain, as well as other conditions. Free swimming is available to certain people, as well as exercise on prescription. Doctors in certain areas are able to give out vouchers for health club memberships that are paid for by the government.
CBE: What challenges do you see?
AD:These things are starting to mushroom, but they're being done in a very devolved way. I would like to see all of these projects pulled together in the next two years to make some national sense of them. Our current Labour government believes in a devolved government. The Department of Health has devolved itself into 300 healthcare trusts, and each decides how its funds are used. That's a lot of extra work.
CBE: Ideally, what would you like to see happen?
AD: In partnership with its operator and supplier members, the FIA has been trying to have an involvement in most of the projects that are going on in the moment. I wish there were some national accountability. I wish our national department of health, based in Westminster, would take some responsibility for auditing the process. But they don’t want to do that; it's not the nature of our socialist government at the moment.
We’ll see what happens as time goes on, but I do think that the evidence from these disjointed projects is going to be so overwhelming in conjunction with the Chief Medical Officer's Report that we will be able to do things on a national level. Already, the Prime Minister has agreed to launch, in January, a national advertising campaign to encourage the population to become more physically active. That is in response to the increasing levels of obesity.
CBE: That's a major change. Do you see the same thing happening in mainland Europe? If not, what are the barriers?
AD:The UK health club industry, in many respects, is more advanced than mainland Europe. That is good because we’ve been able to share our experiences at the various European forums.
The problem with mainland Europe is that legislation is very complicated—it's different in each country. Then it's different again at the European Parliamentary level. The operators building across country boundaries have to purchase a lot of advice and intelligence in terms of country law and EU law.
The other thing is their agenda. Generally speaking, many governments are more aligned with sport, than with health. You'll find that in countries like France, the only experience they have in working with their government is through the department of sport.
Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK are much more developed in relationship to health because it is a very small percentage of health club users that are keeping fit and healthy to participate in sport. Health club membership in these countries is much more about people making themselves feel good, look good and be able to cope with life in a healthy and energetic way, rather than wanting to make the top soccer team. We find that [clubs in mainland Europe] have made very little progress with their governments because pursuing your government in terms of sport when you’re a health club operator is not a good fit for you or for them.
CBE: What do you see as the opportunities for club operators?
AD:We do know that there is a significant amount of funding in the European Union for health-deprived areas; this includes a large chunk of the Mediterranean countries. If we were able to make more sense of the legislation, then our operators could get massive advances in terms of building and opening up clubs in those areas. The legislation is overly complicated and bureaucratic. Therefore, there are not many groups, particularly from our sector, that lobby.
However, several members of the European Parliament have said to me that the EU Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg is an open door. They don’t have any lobbyists. People don't go there to lobby because of the complication of crossing country boundaries and the overly bureaucratic nature of legislation. So if we were to get some sort of powerful European lobby together, the doors would be open.
Patricia Amend, MA, the co-author of The 30-Minute Fitness Solution: A Four-Step Plan for Women of All Ages, is a contributing editor to CBE. She can be reached at Pamend@aol.com.
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