The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7363 p217
20 August 2005

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Health trainer early adopter sites to receive £200k

Details of how health trainers will be introduced across England were announced by public health minister Caroline Flint in a written ministerial statement last month.

From September, 12 early adopter partnerships will each receive £200,000 to test out a draft set of core competencies and job descriptions prepared by the Department of Health Skills for Health programme. The initiative will be extended to the rest of England in 2007.

“Health trainers will be visible and accessible to local people through living and working in the communities they serve providing ‘support from next door’,” Ms Flint said.

“Their task is to motivate individuals to set personal goals for improving their health, by developing personal health plans using a core set of skills based on health psychology and a good understanding of what works,” she added.

The concept of health trainers was introduced in November 2004 in the “Choosing health” White Paper. “Choosing health through pharmacy”, published in April 2005, suggested that pharmacy staff, particularly medicines-counter assistants, could acquire health trainer status, that pharmacies could be used as a setting where health trainers are available and that pharmacists and their staff could have a role in supporting health trainers.

Sue Cohen, consultant in public health at Chesterfield primary care trust, is co-ordinating the health trainers programme across Derbyshire. “We have selected five existing community health projects across Derbyshire for health trainers to work in. Sheffield Hallam University is working with us to develop suitable training materials based on the competencies developed nationally. The programme will start in September. The funding from the DoH will help us to kick-start this programme and then we hope to further develop the programme through the ‘Choosing health’ White Paper initiative as part of a Derbyshire-wide partnership between primary care trusts and local authorities,” she said.

“The five initial projects we have chosen focus on disadvantaged communities and so we will want to involve people who understand the issues these communities face. The health trainers will probably be part-time employees and a whole host of people could take on the role — in the future, projects could certainly involve pharmacy staff,” Dr Cohen added.