Walking to happiness... and health!

2:22pm Wednesday 27th August 2008

Interpreting for her parents led Nurjahan Ali Arobi to seek a career helping others.

“I wanted to do lots of things, primarily helping people, because I started interpreting for my parents from a young age,” she says.

The 34-year-old’s Bangladeshi father came to Bradford for work in the late 1960s, but working and associating with those from his home country gave him little opportunity to speak English.

Nurjahan’s mother grasped sufficient to teach her daughter the alphabet so when Nurjahan started school she was relatively proficient in English. As she learned more she passed her knowledge on to her parents, increasing their language skills in the process and nurturing her own dedication to help others.

The first few years of her career was spent as a classroom assistant at Carlton Bolling College and working in the Bangladesh Porishad community centre, developing, encouraging and improving the achievements of the younger members of the city’s Bangladeshi community.

Nurjahan’s knowledge and experience from her cultural background has been crucial in the local authority and health-related community roles she has fulfilled with the shared focus of ‘bridging the gap’.

Her career highlight was developing and co-ordinating for Book Start, a national initiative raising awareness of the importance of books on a child’s learning and development. Her part-time post focused on project development, working with parents and children, encouraging story-telling and promoting libraries and reading.

At that time she was also working part-time for the Bradford City PCT (Primary Care Trust) as a health development worker. She eventually left Book Start and in 2005 seized the opportunity to combine her interest in walking with her career by becoming Walking for Health coordinator with the PCT.

Run by Natural England, Walking for Health is part of the national initiative Walking the Way to Health. Its aim is to encourage people to improve their health by walking. Experts advocate a brisk walk for a minimum of 30 minutes, five times a week.

Nurjahan says Walking for Health was introduced in Bradford in response to the high levels of obesity, coronary heart disease and diabetes in the city at that time.

Encouraging people to walk is a simple step they can take to improve their own health, and that is the basis of Nurjahan’s role. Once people have taken the first step they can walk on their own or in groups, forging friendships and improving social lives and well-being in the process.

“It is a very simple way of engaging people in their own health. Physical activity is important for maintaining overall health,” she says.

Promoting the benefits of walking is one aspect of her job. She trains walk leaders in a fun and informative way and co-ordinates a timetable of long or short walks. Being a Mosaic Community Champion, Nurjahan is able to use her skills in an initiative to encourage people from black and ethnic minority communities to explore the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Through that role she became a council member of the Yorkshire Dales Society.

Working in partnership with the council, Nurjahan was also involved in the promotion of the city’s recreational open spaces as part of the national Love Parks Week.

To prove she practices what she preaches, she says her daughters, aged four and 11, tell her they are “jogging for health” to keep up with their mum when they all go out walking!

“It’s one of those simple ideas – when people think about it they take it on because they realise the value of it,” says Nurjahan, referring to the importance of walking for health.

“You can easily walk from A to B, but doing it slightly faster is the key to Walking for Health. If they want to lose weight and impact on their health, walking at any pace can achieve that; walking briskly can impact on cardiovascular, not just physical, social and mental well-being.

“It’s just like Book Start,” Nurjahan adds, referring to her earlier career. “It can change their lives and it’s fantastic. I absolutely love it.”

Nurjahan is due to move on to her next role as health trainer and social prescribing services manager, maintaining her health promotion role in the PCT.

For more information about a career in community health, contact Bradford College on (01274) 433333; to find out more about walks or training call (01274) 322587/777522.