Parents’ Association Lecture

(Please note that this event has been switched to the Big Schoolroom at 10.30am on Thursday 25th, since Sixth, Fifth and Fourth Formers will also be attending).

The Parents’ Association is delighted to announce that we have arranged an informative presentation for our parents which will take place next Thursday, 25 January 2018 at 10.30am in the Big Schoolroom. Our guest speaker will be Professor Donal O’Shea, HSE Clinical Lead for Obesity.

Professor O’Shea is a consultant endocrinologist and physician based in St. Vincent’s University Hospital and St. Columcille’s Hospital. Qualified from University College Dublin in 1989, he moved to Hammersmith Hospital in London and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Training Fellowship to study how the brain controls appetite. Since 1999, he has been the lead clinician for a hospital-based multi-disciplinary obesity service that includes bariatric surgery.  In recent years he chaired the health impact assessment group on the potential benefits and harms of a tax on sugar-sweetened drinks and co-chairs the Royal College of Physicians Policy Group on Obesity. He is a regular commentator on the importance of preventing overweight and obesity, advocating for changes in how nutrient poor, energy dense food is promoted and marketed to children and young people as well as the need to re-engineer regular physical activity into everyday life.

As Clinical Lead for Obesity, Professor O’Shea works with the HSE Healthy Eating Active Living Policy Programme. A key focus of the role is the development and integration of evidence based models of care that strengthen prevention, early intervention, treatment for overweight and obesity across primary care and acute services for both children and adults.

The talk will be followed by a Question and Answer session and then our regular Coffee Morning will take place in the Lower Argyle, giving parents the opportunity to chat and catch up before collecting their children for the Exodus weekend.

We are very pleased to have been able to secure Professor O’Shea as a speaker and really hope to see a good crowd there to listen to what he has to say. We are confident it will be an extremely informative event.

Janine Jamieson, Chairperson of the Parents’ Association.