Chapter 5: Health as a way of life

The consultation made it clear that people are ambitious for their health and the health of their families, but often found it difficult to turn good intentions into sustained action. People wanted support both in making the right decisions for their own health and help to carry them out in practice. This chapter sets out new proposals to provide that support. First, anyone who wants help to make healthier choices and stick to them will have the opportunity to be supported by a new kind of personal health resource, NHS health trainers. In keeping with a shift in public health approaches from ’advice from on high to support from next door’, health trainers will be drawn from local communities, understanding the daytoday concerns and experiences of the people they are supporting on health. They will be accredited by the NHS to have skills appropriate for helping members of their community to achieve the changes that they want to make. In touch with the realities of the lives of the people they work with and with a shared stake in improving the health of the communities that they live in, health trainers will be friendly, approachable, understanding and supportive. Offering practical advice and good connections into the services and support available locally, they will become an essential commonsense resource in the community to help out on health choices. A guide for those who want help, not an instructor for those who do not, they will provide valuable support for people to make informed lifestyle choices. Different neighbourhoods will need different types of health trainers and in developing good practice we will learn from seeing which models work best for different communities and individuals. By starting in the most deprived communities we will learn how best to ensure that health trainers reach the most deprived groups. Second, everyone who wants to will have the opportunity, starting in the areas of the country with the biggest health challenges, to use a personal health kit to develop their own personal health plan, based on who they are, what they want and what their circumstances are. This tool will help people to identify their own priorities for health, the changes that they feel ready to make, to receive online guidance about what will make the most impact to their lives and receive tailored advice on how to go about making changes and sticking to them.

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