Healthy Weight Coaches

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Understanding the role of Healthy Weight Coaches in the weight management system

• IRAS ID

  335395

• Contact name

  Charlotte Albury

• Contact email

  charlotte.albury@phc.ox.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Oxford

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 10 months, 3 days

• Research summary

  Background
  Healthy Weight Coaches (HWC) support people with obesity to access weight loss services. However, as this role is new we do not know who has taken up the HWC role, how this new role fits in, and what patients think about HWCs. This project will help us find this out, and learn how health weight coaches can support their patients.
  We will find out about:
  • The role of HWCs in primary care weight management
  • Patients’ and carers’ experiences of HWCs
  • How HWCs can have supportive conversations about weight

  What will we do?
  We will ask some questions in a survey to find out if and how the role of HWCs varies across England.
  We will also work with 5 primary care sites, across the country, to:
  1. Speak to primary care workers, including HWCs, to understand how HWCs fit in the primary care team and with the weight management support options available.
  2. Produce a diagram that shows how the HWC fits in with other weight loss support for patients.
  3. Record up to 100 HWC consultations (with patients' and companions' permission), and use a method called conversation analysis to understand what works well and not so well in these conversations.
  4. Ask patients and carers about how HWC appointments were offered to them and what their expectations were. We will speak to patients about how the appointment went, and, 15 weeks later, ask if they followed the HWC’s advice.
  Our PPI panel, and other stakeholders will help choose the most important results. We will run a workshop together to co-design training to help HWCs have better conversations with patients.

  PPI
  Nine patients and carers helped design this project, and seventeen commented on our lay summary. A patient and carer group will work with us throughout the study.

  Lay Summary of Results:

  1. Purpose
  The NHS introduced a ‘healthy weight coach’ (HWC) role. The aim of the HWC role is to advise, support, signpost, and refer patients to weight management services. The aim of this research project is to understand the role of HWCs in the weight management system, and use this learning to produce additional training for HWCs, focussed on communication skills.

  2. Key Findings

  2.1 The heathy weight coach role was not implemented as intended
  • While the HWC training was intended for patient-facing professional to become a healthy weight coach, the HWC training was instead mostly used to upskill professionals who already worked to provide health coaching.
  • The HWC training advocated for the role to focus on signposting and onward referral. This did not occur in practice.
  • The HWC training is used by coaches delivering the NHS Diabetes Prevention
  Programme, NHS Digital Weight Management Programme, and NHS Type 2 Diabetes Path to Remission Programme, showing expansion in implementation beyond its intended remit.
  2.2 The role-as-implemented was ubiquitously valued
  • Patients reported seeing the HWC as a positive, motivational experience which they found both useful, and helpful.
  • Professionals who had completed the training found it helped them support patients living with obesity.
  • Practices recognised that HWCs could alleviate some pressure on GP time and viewed the training and role positively.
  2.3 There are challenges in implementation of the HWC role
  • Clinical space, financial constraints and incentives, time, and competing workload presented challenges in implementation of the HWC role.
  • Staff and healthcare practices lacked guidance on how to implement the HWC role into the local systems and practices: how to refer to patients; the exact remit of this role; key performance indicators; and other success criteria for the role.
  • Outside of the practices where the training was taken, there was commonly no knowledge of the HWC role. If the role was known about there was often no knowledge of how to become a HWC, or how to refer patients to a HWC.
  • HWCs reported that training lacked detail and that they did not feel it equipped them well enough to fully support patients with weight management.
  • The training does not include detail on supporting patients who are taking weight management medications, although this is now an important part of the weight management landscape.
  Has the registry been updated to include summary results?: No
  If yes - please enter the URL to summary results:
  If no – why not?: We have not registered this qualitative study. We do plan on publishing the results.
  Did you follow your dissemination plan submitted in the IRAS application form (Q A51)?: Pending
  If yes, describe or provide URLs to disseminated materials:
  If pending, date when dissemination is expected: 30/09/2027
  If no, explain why you didn't follow it:
  Have participants been informed of the results of the study?: Pending
  If yes, describe and/or provide URLs to materials shared and how they were shared:
  If pending, date when feedback is expected: 28/02/2027
  If no, explain why they haven't:
  Have you enabled sharing of study data with others?: Yes
  If yes, describe or provide URLs to how it has been shared: We are in the process of arranging for the consultation recordings to be hosted by the University of Oxford and made available for secondary analysis (where informed consent as given)
  If no, explain why sharing hasn't been enabled: T
  Have you enabled sharing of tissue samples and associated data with others?: No
  If yes, describe or provide a URL:
  If no, explain why: This was a qualitative study.
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• REC name

  Yorkshire & The Humber - Leeds West Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  24/YH/0204

• Date of REC Opinion

  4 Sep 2024

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion