Hosted by the School of Psychological Science
Abstract: Digital health promotion programmes have the capacity to achieve substantial population health impact at relatively low cost. I will present findings from our independent evaluations of the implementation of two digital health promotion programmes that have been rolled out across England. First, the NHS digital diabetes prevention programme aims to prevent development of type 2 diabetes in people at high risk through behaviour change to reduce and maintain weight. Second, the NHS Healthy Living intervention aims to help people with type 2 diabetes to better manage their condition. These two programmes have reached 100,000s of people to date. I will focus on how the implementation of these two programmes accorded with the evidence base on which they were developed. I will discuss how future national implementation of digital health programmes might be improved, and how we are working with NHS England to help improve future implementation.
Bio: David French is Professor of Health Psychology at the University of Manchester. He has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including eight in the BMJ. He was an author and Scientific Advisory Group member for the 2021 update of MRC/ NIHR guidance on Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions (third edition). He was a panel member for Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, sub-panel 2: Public Health, Health Services and Primary Care. He was co-Editor for the official journal of the British Psychological Society: British Journal of Health Psychology for 5 years (2013-2017). He was elected in 2022 as President Elect of the European Health Psychology Society.