BMC Public Health Research article Health promotion services for lifestyle development within a UK hospital – Patients' experiences and views Charlotte L Haynes BioMed Central Open Access Address: Clinical Effectiveness Unit, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, Cheshire, UK Email: Charlotte L Haynes - charlotte.haynes@stockport.nhs.uk Published: 13 August 2008 BMC Public Health 2008, 8:284 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-8-284 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/8/284 Received: 6 December 2007 Accepted: 13 August 2008 © 2008 Haynes; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: UK public health policy requires hospitals to have in place health promotion services which enable patients to improve their health through adopting healthy behaviours, i.e. health education. This study investigated hospitalised patients' experiences of health education for smoking, alcohol use, diet, physical activity, and weight, and their views concerning the appropriateness of hospitals as a setting for the delivery of health education services. Methods: Recently discharged adult hospital patients (n = 322) were sent a questionnaire asking about their smoking, alcohol use, diet, physical activity, and weight. For each of these risk factors, participants were asked whether they agreed with screening for the risk factor, whether they received health education, whether it was "helpful", and if they wanted to change their behaviour. Participants were also asked a set of general questions concerning health education within hospitals. Results: 190 patients responded (59%). Over 80% agreed with screening for all risk factors. 80% of smokers, 52% consuming alcohol above recommended limits, 86% of obese, 66% consuming less than five fruit and vegetables a day, and 61% of physically inactive participants wanted to change their respective behaviour. However only a third reported receiving health education. While over 60% of patients wanted health education around discharge, the majority of those receiving health education did so at admission. The majority agreed that "hospital is a good place for patients to receive" health education (87%) and that "the hospital should provide patients with details of community organisations that provide" health education (83%). Only a minority (31%) reported a preference for health education from their GP instead of hospital. Conclusion: While the delivery of health education to patients within hospital was poor, hospitals are viewed by patients as an appropriate, and in some cases preferred setting for the screening of risk factors and delivery of health education. Background There is increasing pressure on hospitals to deliver health promotion services for healthy lifestyles to patients [1-4]. The Ottawa charter for health promotion, 1986 provides a broad definition of health promotion as "the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health" [5]. This can only be achieved through coordi- nated action from governmental and nongovernmental organisations, the health, social and economic sectors, voluntary organization, local authorities, industry, the Page 1 of 10 (page number not for citation purposes)