BMC Public Health 2008, 8:284 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/8/284 men consume more alcohol and less fruit and vegetables than older adults, and are more likely to be smokers [25]; hence they are at risk of developing chronic diseases. The finding that smokers were less likely to respond to the questionnaire may have repercussions on the findings concerning the receptivity of patients to health education. Previous research has indicated that smokers are less likely to believe that "the way people live affects their health" [16], suggesting they may be less responsive to health edu- cation, and that hospitals may face additional challenges in successfully delivering health education to smokers. While there was a reasonable response rate to the ques- tionnaire, the poor provision of health education meant that statistical analysis of some questionnaire items was limited by small sample sizes. Improvements in the provi- sion of health education within hospitals and/or larger sample sizes would improve the situation. Some ques- tionnaire items require minor changes in wording to allow for definitive conclusions concerning patients' views on sharing information between healthcare sectors and preferences for hospitals over GPs for health educa- tion delivery. Conclusion The findings of this study should encourage hospitals to improve their health promotion services. Hospital health- care professionals should be made aware that approxi- mately a quarter of patients may in fact prefer health education from a hospital setting rather than their GP, that there is a demand for health education, and agree- ment with screening of all risk factors. This information may allay concerns that some risk factors are too sensitive to address, and challenge the view that lack of receptivity from patients is an obstacle to delivering health education [30,31]. Health education is however not for everyone, with approximately 1 in 10 patients choosing not to receive health education for risk factors while hospital- ised, and staff need to ensure that they respect this desire. The (apparently substantial) challenge now facing UK hospitals, is how will they meet their patients' demand for health education? Guidance on how to embed health pro- motion services within hospitals has been provided by the WHO HPH [3,4]. While there is some controversy con- cerning the "success" of this project/network [32-35], there are examples of successful health promotion projects within hospitals and some reports of hospitals becoming health promotion settings [36-38], lessons from which, UK hospitals would be wise to learn from. Competing interests The author declares that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions CH was involved in the conception and design of the project. CH collected, analysed and interpreted the data. CH wrote the entire article. Additional material Additional file 1 Table – Proportion of patients with a risk factor and proportion deliv- ered health promotion. data for Table. Click here for file [http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/supplementary/1471- 2458-8-284-S1.doc] Acknowledgements Thanks to the "Health Promotion in Hospitals Steering Group" and Dr Gary Cook, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust for their contribution to this project. This project was funded by Stockport NHS Foundation Trust Research & Development Funds. References 1. Department of Health: Choosing Health. Making Healthy Choices Easier. 2004. 2. Department of Health: Essence of Care. Benchmarks for Pro- moting Health. 2006 [http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandsta tistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_075613]. 3. World Health Organisation Europe: Standards for Health Pro- motion in Hospitals. 2004 [http://www.euro.who.int/document/ e82490.pdf]. 4. 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