Active Black Country Launches Pioneering Insight Hub

Active Black Country, the strategic lead for sport and physical activity across the Black Country has developed an online insight hub as a platform to share learnings generated from across four key themes of Communities, Education, Health and Wellbeing and Workforce, Skills and Employment.

This unique and innovative Insight Hub, which is supported by the University of Wolverhampton, is home to information that can’t be accessed anywhere else in relation to how we address the issue of tackling inactivity in the Black Country.

It aims to provide a customer-facing resource that houses all the latest Black Country-specific data and intelligence in relation to physical activity and wider determinants.

This includes;

• The latest data, specific to physical activity and associated indicators, presented from a Black Country perspective.
• Key learnings, both from a softer thematic perspective and in direct relation to work being undertaken across our 8 priority ward areas.
• An understanding of the added value that Active Black Country can provide through our capacity for monitoring and evaluation and performance management.

Michael Salmon, Head of Insight, Health and Wellbeing for Active Black Country said:

The hub will offer strategic level insight that is transferable to drive innovation across policy and design of interventions across our community, education and health themes. It will provide an evidence base to lever future investment into the Black Country and support better integration of local services to get Black Country residents more active, healthier and happier”.

Ian Carey, Active Black Country Director continued:

A strong feature of our work has been our intelligence function, that combines an understanding of the demographics of the region, physical infrastructure and local community assets. By working with our local partners and the University, we aim to develop our level of understanding with regard to people’s attitudes to activity along with opportunities for and barriers to active lifestyles”.

Through academics in both the Sport and Physical Activity Research Centre, and the Institute for Community Research and Development, the University of Wolverhampton will support the work of Active Black Country by providing challenge to underpin the monitoring and evaluation of sport and physical activity programmes across the Black Country. 

Dr Richard Medcalf, Director of the Institute of Human Sciences and Independent Board Member of Active Black Country, said:

I’m delighted that we have built this very practical partnership between the research undertaken at the university and the pioneering work which Active Black Country is undertaking”.

In addition to the Insight Hub, Active Black Country will accommodate university staff and students in support of mutual research projects relating to a broad range of issues including topics such as the social prescribing of exercise and the application of physical literacy principles in our regional physical activity landscape.

The Insight Hub can be found at www.blackcountryinsighthub.co.uk If you have any queries regarding the Insight Hub, or would like to find out more, please contact michael_salmon@blackcountryconsortium.co.uk