Health Trainers were originally identified in 2004 where ‘Choosing Health: Making healthy choices easier’ (DH 2004) gave a commitment that from 2006 NHS Health Trainers would be providing information, motivation and practical support to individuals in their local communities as:
‘People want to make their own decisions about choices that effect their health and they wanted support to make the right decisions for their own health and help to carry them out in practice’
In its report ‘Shaping the future of Public Health: promoting health in the NHS’ the government outlined a strategy for empowering people to make healthy choices, based on the principles of:
- Supporting informed choice for health
- Personalised support to individuals to make healthy choices
- Working in partnership to achieve these aims
In 2008, ‘Health Inequalities: Progress and next steps’ (DH 2008) made a commitment to roll out Health Trainers to every community, and extend their reach with an additional network of Health Champions who will operate as an outreach team, facilitating uptake of Health Trainer services and other interventions, as appropriate.