ORGANISERS behind a health campaign say it has saved 300,000 years of life for people in East Lancashire since it was set up 12 months ago.

The Save a Million Years of Life (SMYL) campaign by NHS East Lancashire aims to improve people’s health by making small lifestyle changes, such as reducing their alcohol consumption, taking more exercise or quitting smoking.

The progress of the campaign in its first year has now seen it singled out for praise in the NHS ‘One Year On’ review.

Members of the SMYL team will join Lord Ara Darzi, parliamentary-under-secretary of state for health, to launch the publication of the review at the city of Manchester stadium.

It is part of the ‘Healthier Horizons’ strategy, a ten-year plan for NHS organisations in the North West to improve the quality of care and personalised service for patients in the region.

The aim was to save 100,000 years of life in the first year one year of being in operation, but this has been exceeded by three times as many.

Kathy Reade, chair of NHS East Lancashire, commented: “There is a history of poor health in East Lancashire and there is a difference in life expectancy both between and within the boroughs.

“We aimed to address this with our SMYL campaign, which concentrated on six priority issues - alcohol abuse, drugs misuse, heart disease and stroke, tobacco control, geographical inequalities and infant mortality.

“So far, we have made significant steps in our campaign. In our first year, we calculate we have already saved 300,000 years of life, smashing our year one target of 100,000 years.”

In 2008, the ‘SMYL’ campaign launched two sub-campaigns, ‘Know when to say when’, which focussed on reducing alcohol harm, and ‘Could it be you’, which aimed to raise awareness of chronic heart disease.

Both campaigns featured hard-hitting posters which highlighted the consequences of alcohol misuse and poor heart health respectively.

For ‘Know when to say when’, a portable pub pitched up outside supermarkets and town centres in the boroughs, dispensing bottles of water to members of the public.

To raise awareness of chronic heart disease, PCT staff took to the streets of East Lancashire to carry out blood pressure checks on members of the public.

The campaign has also urged people to ‘Put it out for Good’ as part of its smoking cessation initiative.