Freedom Leisure has appointed Hannah Dyke as Healthy Communities Lead in a bid to enhance its commitment to further develop programmes and services to inspire the inactive and meet the health and wellbeing needs of the diverse communities it serves across England and Wales.
Hannah has over 15 years’ experience working in the leisure, sport & physical activity sector and over her career has worked for many different organisations from delivering community sports development initiatives, working for England Netball focusing on participation programmes, supporting clubs, coaches and volunteers as well as working within an Active Partnership in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Living Sport
More recently Hannah has been at Cambridge City Council as their Senior Active Lifestyle Officer, utilising public health funding to reduce health inequalities in the city, managing a team focused on reaching new communities to increase physical activity levels across deprived areas of Cambridge.
Freedom Leisure, one of the leading charitable and not-for-profit leisure trusts, was set up with a simple mission - to “improve lives through leisure”. The introduction of integrated care systems (ICSs) marks a fundamental shift towards a more collaborative and place-based way to improve population health and address health inequality. Freedom Leisure recognises that it can play a positive and collaborative role as part of this system approach to health improvement.
We’re delighted to have made this appointment and Hannah will lead our team of health and wellbeing professionals across the organisation to continue to address gaps in health inequalities in our regions and achieve real and measurable improvements. Physical activity is acknowledged as having a key role to play as part of a preventative health strategy. With this new senior role Freedom Leisure intends to enhance its capability to substantially contribute to population health and wellbeing.
Ivan Horsfall Turner
I'm really excited to join Freedom Leisure as Healthy Communities Lead - utilising leisure settings to support the prevention agenda and adopting a whole-systems approach to population health; with the aim of working collaboratively with partners to contribute to a reduction in health inequalities in the local communities we serve across England and Wales.
Hannah Dyke