AAAD is a student led, healthy lifestyles teaching program, running in the universities local secondary school: BACA.

The AAAD project is rooted in socioeconomics, with the aim to assist efforts combating health inequalities associated with the challenges of the local area. This piece written by Dr Amaran Cumarasamy, one of the founding members is a useful introduction to the initiative:

The programme involves six classroom sessions built into the school’s Year 7 PSHE schedule. Our mini-curriculum centres on core government and council health messages such as balance, moderation and limiting sugary drink intake. Beyond this, there is a deliberate focus on bringing the conversation to young people in a fun and interactive way, offering fruits they may not have tried before and practical takeaways like understanding food labels and recipe-planning to empower pupils to make healthy choices where possible. 

We use student mentors to teach the sessions; so far these have been solely recruited from the medical school, but – excitingly – this is the first year we have recruited student mentors from other life science courses and we are looking forward to them joining the program from September!