Health Champions

Project overview

We conducted a feasibility trial to find out if having support from a volunteer (called a Health Champion) helped people living with an Severe Mental Illness (SMI) manage their physical health’

Here is an overview of the project approach, outcomes and learnings.

You can also read about the project findings further below.

Having the insight into other’s life, you begin to appreciate your life, and you look at how much you’re growing. For me, when I talk about healing, by giving
out to others, what’s been coming back to me is selflove, self-awareness, self-care, self-realisation.

- Experience of a Health Champion who worked with us on the project.

Project outputs

The IMPHS team recognised the value in sharing this model widely, and has developed an infographic to help other healthcare professionals and providers to understand how the project was delivered. You can view this here.

Health Champions Toolkit

The IMPHS team wanted to be able to build upon the above materials, and provide a more comprehensive toolkit for healthcare professionals and providers to use should the intervention be adopted.

The complete toolkit will be available to view by March 2023. If you'd like more information about this, please contact julie.b.williams@kcl.ac.uk.

Academic evaluation

The evaluation for this project was delivered in collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Implementation Science at King’s College London, and associates at the University of East Anglia. A series of academic publications have been delivered as part of this project, including:

Click here to view the full academic evaluation.

Webinar

In November 2022, the IMPHS team successfully delivered a live public webinar to broadcast the outcomes and learning from the Health Champions project. The event included guest speakers, including Isobel Mdudu from the SLaM Volunteer Network, as well as experts by experience who had worked with us on the project.

Watch the full webinar below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1VQgOQl5M

Contact

For more information about this study, please contact IMPHS@slam.nhs.uk.

Learn more about IMPHS and its other projects here.