As a new year begins, many people make resolutions to improve their lifestyle by eating healthier food, giving up vices like smoking or drinking alcohol, or exercising more. But how many of these good intentions last beyond January? An article published by BBC News (Oyebode, 2020) explored the role that friends, colleagues and family can play in encouraging our healthy (or not so healthy) habits. The article argues that while our social networks can be good for our health if we have positive role models, they can also encourage bad habits as we tend to copy those around us. We can ‘catch’ obesity from our friends. Studies have found we are 57% more likely to become obese if a close friend does.
The article suggests that targeting health advice at ‘social butterflies’—those who are the backbone of their social networks, who interact with lots of people and are admired by others—may be a way of improving health more widely as they can influence their friends and relatives. This got me thinking, could practice nurses have this effect on patients? Perhaps seeing a practice nursing team adopting a healthy lifestyle could influence the local community to improve their own.
One easy way to encourage the community to be more active is to become a ‘parkrun practice’. The Royal College of General Practitioners and parkrun UK have collaborated on an initiative to improve the health of practice staff and patients by encouraging practices to link up with their local 5 km parkrun that is held for free every Saturday morning. Participants can walk, jog or volunteer, and it is open to all, including those who are inactive or have health conditions or disabilities. There are now over 1200 registered parkrun practices across the UK.
Lifestyle changes are at the forefront of type 2 diabetes prevention. This month the NHS has released figures highlighting the effect of the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme (NHS England, 2020), which targets those at high risk of developing the disease. In total, 89 604 people have now finished the programme, losing a combined weight of 185 051kg, or the weight of 43 ambulances. This may not sound like a huge amount per person, but is a step in the right direction and will hopefully translate to better outcomes for this group of people.
While obesity is a big problem, practice nurses always find innovative and practical ways to rise to challenges. On behalf of myself and our editor-in-chief Debbie Brown, I'd like to wish you all a happy and healthy 2020.
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