NHS must take long term approach to tackling unhealthy lifestyles

A new report states the NHS needs to change its approach to health prevention in order to successfully impact on key health risks including alcohol misuse, obesity and smoking. 'Commissioning and behaviour change; Kicking Bad Habits', produced by the King's fund, says more work is needed to ensure NHS staff are suitably skilled to ensure people choose and maintain healthier lifestyles. A long term approach from the NHS must be delivered as the UK's unhealthy habits are deep-rooted within society and can not be addressed by short term measures.

Key recommendations from the report include:

• The NHS needs to make better use of social marketing techniques and data analysis tools to identify, target and effectively communicate messages and motivate people to change how they live.
• Public health programmes shouldn’t rely on just one approach such as information campaigns or financial incentives as the evidence shows the most effective behaviour change interventions employ a variety of tactics.
• A robust evaluation of short and long-term changes in behaviour and health outcomes should be made a requirement of all public health programmes in order to build an evidence base for the future.
• Frontline staff should be more proactive in promoting healthy habits to the patients they see every day and for contracts and incentives to be used to encourage such behaviour.
• Government departments and local agencies involved in tackling unhealthy behaviours must better co-ordinate their efforts and ensure that targets are agreed to support their shared objectives.

The report comes in the wake of the recent National Audit Office (NAO) review of alcohol treatment which found varied levels of provision of alcohol services from PCTs across the country. However health commissioners are becoming more accountable for alcohol within local partnerships since the new PSA for alcohol and drugs (PSA 25) was introduced. PCTs are required to be part of Local Area Agreements within each authority, see here for more on the strategic delivery framework for alcohol.

The King's Fund have set up a Kicking bad Habits project page that includes a number of related reports and presentations.