Today is World Health Day 2017.

Currently, in my constituency, I am supporting a number of health initiatives. ‘Beat the Street’ is one of the health initiatives; it encourages people of all ages to improve their health by exercising more, the hugely popular walking and cycling challenge has returned for a second year to Wolverhampton after more than 27,000 people took part in 2016, racing across Wolverhampton to complete miles, collect points and win prizes.

The free competition continues until Wednesday 3 May, 2017, and challenges people to see how far they can travel across Wolverhampton in return for points and prizes. Players score points and miles by tapping special sensors called Beat Boxes which can be found on lampposts around the City.

Tapping one of the 191 Beat Boxes at the start of the journey, and others en route or at the end, calculates the distance that the player has travelled. This is recorded against the card and added to the player’s individual total, their team total and the city’s overall score.

I have created my own team and will be racing to tap beat boxes around my constituency on 28th April where I am doing a ‘Beat the Street’ walk with a class from local primary school Holy Trinity, in Bilston.

Staff in my Wolverhampton office have been taking part and local councillors and community members have also signed up to join my team! I am looking forward to the planned walk with the staff and children from Holy Trinity Primary School in Bilston and we hope to collect as many points as possible!

In addition to this, I am also keen to set up a Bilston parkrun in Wolverhampton’s East Park. If you are interested in joining me then please fill out this form;

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ZHP3T5F

Finally, on World Health Day, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the services and organisations within my constituency who work hard to support the health needs of the people in Wolverhampton. One of the services within my constituency is the WV Active Bert Williams Leisure Centre which I visited last Saturday; it is a great facility that have a variety of classes, activities and opportunities available for people of all ages. More information about the centre can be found here;

http://wvactive.com/bilston-bert-williams.aspx