The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7373 p541
29 October 2005

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News summary

Developing Patient Partnerships produces guidance to support health education campaigns

Guidance for community pharmacists on communicating healthy lifestyle messages has been produced by Developing Patient Partnerships. The guidance aims to support pharmacists to offer weight and lifestyle advice to their customers.

DPP will be producing guidance on how to improve communication with patients to accompany all future campaign materials; this is in response to the new contract requirement that pharmacies in England and Wales run six health education campaigns each year.

The guidance makes suggestions about ways in which pharmacists can raise awareness of the types of information, advice and services they offer, including poster displays, targeted window displays, leaflets and booklets for people to take away, and using prescription collection as an opportunity to promote healthy lifestyle messages.

It also gives advice on how to identify and approach high-risk customers, signposting to other services and promoting a new service to the local media.

The guidance will be distributed along with other campaign materials that can be purchased from DPP.