Training The Trainers Is The Key To Good Health, UK

Main Category: Medical Students / Training
Article Date: 19 Sep 2007 - 17:00 PDT

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Government plans to use health trainers to change risky behaviours in 'hard to reach' groups can be effective if the trainers use evidenced-based psychological techniques.

This is the conclusion of Dawn Wilkinson and Susan Michie of University College London. They revealed their findings on Thursday 13 September 2007, at the Division of Health Psychology Annual Conference at the University of Nottingham.

Health trainers were introduced by the government as a 'new kind of personal health resource' that could help people to 'make healthier choices and stick to them.'

The researchers found that the scheme, which was introduced in England in 2006, has been helping people from 'hard to reach' groups to quit smoking but has been less effective in helping people to eat more healthily.

The researchers studied 118 people who set themselves the goal of quitting smoking or eating more healthily. They questioned them about how they saw their own behaviour, asked the health trainers what they thought about the participants and measured the breath carbon monoxide levels for those with smoking goals and weight for those with healthy eating goals.

After one month, there were significant improvements amongst smokers, in terms of how they assessed their own attempts to quit, the health trainers' perceptions of their attempts to quit and their recorded carbon monoxide levels.

But with healthier eating, there was a small amount of weight loss and the participants did not feel they were achieving their healthy eating goal. Yet the health trainers reported a significant improvement in the healthy eating of the participants.

Dr Wilkinson said: "The results show real promise regarding the health trainers' approach to helping people to quit smoking and switch to healthier eating. Also, whilst the perception of change among participants is smaller regarding healthy eating, we need to recognise that the physical outcomes of such a change are not so rapid or readily observable to them."

Professor Michie has worked with colleagues to produce the Health Trainer Handbook, a 'guidebook' to this kind of work. This handbook will help to ensure that health trainers across England use techniques that have been shown to be effective in bringing about behaviour change.

British Psychological Society