The event was organised in partnership with the newly launched Driving Better Health charity, a driver-focused charity dedicated to promoting health awareness and wellbeing across the transport and logistics industry, and the Road Haulage Association.
In her opening keynote, Rachel Taylor MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Freight and Logistics, announced that the APPG will launch a ‘Call for Evidence’ on driver health and welfare, with the aim of publishing a report early next year.
The announcement set the scene for a day of discussion about how the industry and policymakers can work together to improve support for drivers. Professor Stacy Clemes, of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences (SSEHS), revealed in her keynote the latest research findings into driver health, highlighting that UK HGV drivers are more than two times more likely to be living with obesity in comparison to those from the general population, working in similar 'non-driving' occupations.
Professor Clemes’s keynote went on to summarise a range of driver health promotion solutions that her and colleagues have developed, including the highly impactful SHIFT (Structured Health Intervention For Transport) programme, developed in partnership with Leicester Diabetes Centre, as well as worksite wellness checks.
The event also featured an exhibition of SSEHS researchers’ recent work, conducted in partnership with HGV drivers, examining drivers’ working environments and rest stops.
In the afternoon, Prof Ashleigh Filtness, Director of Loughborough University Transport Safety Research Centre, and Dr Iuliana Hartescu contributed their expertise as panellists discussing tackling driver fatigue.
Reflecting on the day, Prof Stacy Clemes said:
“It was a real pleasure to welcome attendees from across the sector to Loughborough University for a day of discussion about prioritising and improving driver health. There was a high level of engagement and enthusiasm in the room for supporting the health and wellbeing of the UK’s essential driver workforce.”
Attendee Chris Floyd (Transport Safety & Standards Lead at Evri Group, and Chair of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents National Road Safety Committee) commented:
“We perform a mandatory, routine check on vehicles every single day we use them. Why would we not want to know (and seek to improve) the health of the most vital part of our operation, the people? Knowing the capabilities of those who drive our vehicles should be as routine and as important to an organisation as knowing the capabilities of the vehicles themselves.”
Driving Better Health founder Dr Grant Charlesworth-Jones added:
“There are multiple challenges around driver health and for this reason it has not been possible to solve them. Driving Better Health now brings all of these issues together so that, together with industry and Government, we can directly address these problems. There has been a great deal of interest from many other countries in Driver Health Week which sets us on course to be leading on this subject internationally.”