Health coach

BACKGROUND: The field of human expert performance teaches us that high quality, high-dose guided practice is required to make large gains in cognitively driven acts. The same also seems to be true for people with acquired brain injury, yet therapy services for people with aphasia (PWA) have traditionally not been designed with this in mind. Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programmes (ICAPs) are one way to address the chronic under-dosing of therapy that most PWA experience. AIMS: There are several ways to deliver an ICAP; here we describe two iterations of our Queen Square ICAP...

Home care (HC) aides experience numerous safety hazards in clients' homes; many hazards also put clients at risk. We hypothesized that safety coaching led by nurse managers (NMs) during their initial HC needs assessment could prompt clients to improve safety conditions in their homes. Following a 2-arm proof-of-concept intervention study design, intervention NMs used motivational interviewing (MI), facilitated by a safety handbook and video, to coach clients on home safety improvements. Control arm NMs performed intake assessments with no changes to usual practices...

BACKGROUND: Narrative written feedback given to students by faculty often fails to identify areas for improvement and recommended actions to lead to this improvement. When these elements are missing, it is challenging for students to improve and for medical schools to use narrative feedback in promotion decisions, to guide coaching plans and to pass on meaningful information to residency programs. Large-group faculty development has improved narrative written feedback, but less is known about individualised faculty development to supplement large-group sessions...

The central importance of the biopsychosocial model of chronic disease is increasingly recognised in the management of long-term conditions (LTC), which are often associated with chronic pain, fatigue and disability. Despite the physical and mental health impact, 'struggle' to maintain self-efficacy, gap in effective transition to adult pathways and long term consequences of poor disease control and lifestyle choices in young people with LTCs, innovation in this age range is rarely reported in generic journals...

INTRODUCTION: Health2Sync (H2S) is a digital health technology platform that provides coaching and titration support to patients with diabetes. The Mallya cap converts a conventional insulin pen into a smart connected device that can automatically synchronize dose values and associated timestamps (upon injection) to the H2S platform. This single-arm real-world study evaluated the effectiveness of insulin glargine 300 U/mL (Gla-300) combined with H2S and Mallya cap (Gla-300 + Cap + App program) on clinical outcomes among users with type 2 diabetes (T2D) in Taiwan...

OBJECTIVE: Sleep quality is a crucial concern, particularly among youth. The integration of health coaching with question-answering (QA) systems presents the potential to foster behavioural changes and enhance health outcomes. This study proposes a novel human-AI sleep coaching model, combining health coaching by peers and a QA system, and assesses its feasibility and efficacy in improving university students' sleep quality. METHODS: In a four-week unblinded pilot randomised controlled trial, 59 university students (mean age: 21...

OBJECTIVE: Mobile health (mHealth) services suffer from high attrition rates yet represent a viable strategy for adults to improve their health. There is a need to develop evidence-based mHealth services and to constantly evaluate their feasibility. This study explored the acceptability, usability, engagement and optimisation of a co-developed mHealth service, aiming to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours. METHODS: The service LongLife Active® (LLA) is a mobile app with coaching...

BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is prevalent, yet sub-optimally treated among persons with multiple sclerosis (MS). We propose that exercise training may be a promising approach for treating depression in persons with MS who have MDD. Our primary hypothesis predicts a reduction in depression severity immediately after an exercise training intervention compared with minimal change in an attention control condition, and the reduction will be maintained during a follow-up period...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Effective communication skills are essential for all pharmacists, regardless of practice setting. An implicit need in pharmacy education is to emphasize direct application of these skills to future healthcare practice prior to experiential rotations. The aim of this article is to describe how we revised a required first professional year (P1) doctor of pharmacy course to achieve two main goals: 1) improve the course relevance by connecting content to real-world skills; and 2) qualify all pharmacy students at our institution as certified National Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) lifestyle coaches upon course completion...

This study explored the acceptability of Children and Teens in Charge of their Health (CATCH), a program for children with spina bifida or cerebral palsy to enhance their physical activity and diet. Qualitative interviews were conducted with children ( n  = 6) and their parents ( n  = 6) who participated in CATCH. Analysis used an environmental systems framework. Microsystem factors impacting acceptability of the program were: Children's motivations for change, their age, and their physical health...

BACKGROUND: Chronic pain affects approximately 8 million Canadians (~20%), impacting their physical and mental health while burdening the health care system with costs of upwards of US $60 billion a year. Indeed, patients are often trialed on numerous medications over several years without reductions to their symptoms. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify new therapies for chronic pain to improve patients' quality of life, increase the availability of treatment options, and reduce the burden on the health care system...

BACKGROUND: Women with BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants (PVs) have a choice of preventive options. To help these women decide for themselves, we developed and implemented a decision coaching (DC) program and evaluated it for congruence between the participants' desired and actual roles in decision-making. METHODS: Healthy BRCA1/2 PV carriers (from 25 to 60 years of age) were recruited at six centers in Germany. Those returning baseline T1-questionnaires were randomly assigned to the intervention group (IG) or the control group (CG)...

This study aimed to explore the views of judo coaches on their perceived knowledge (PK) and needs for education (NE) for training older practitioners. In total, 470 international (Europe = 48%, Americas = 22%, Africa = 23%, Asia = 5% and Oceania = 2%) judo coaches (IJF: level 1 = 55,3%, level 2 = 33%; judo black belt: 3,4 ± 1,7 dan; F = 15%; university education: 68% >BA) responded an online survey encompassing demographic information and 35 items relevant to training older adults (Aging process; Safety and First Aid; Organization & Environment; Physiology and Fitness; Psychology & Mental Health; Teaching & Training) to be rated on a 7-point Likert scale for PK and NE...

BACKGROUND: The main contribution of this article is establishing a set of behaviors and successful actions experimenting the Ipacs' (Institutional & Public Coaching Services) methodology on implementation of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), approved in Italy in 2021 to overcome the socio-economic impact of the pandemic. This research is aimed at pointing out emotional intelligence (EI) behaviors related to the activities of the NRP with respect to the National Health System (NHS)...

BACKGROUND: For athletes, overcoming obstacles in challenging situations like pandemic home training is crucial. Strategies and approaches in this context are not well-documented. Our study aims to investigate such a scenario from a performance standpoint, based on a major global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. METHODS: This cross-sectional study surveyed athletes without disabilities using online questionnaires (35 languages) from May to July 2020. Questions included aspects of alternative routines, training monitoring, recovery, sleep patterns, injury occurrence/prevention based on structured answers, and an open-ended question on lockdown training experiences...

OBJECTIVE: Facilitated self-management interventions have the potential to enhance resilience and well-being. We examined whether resilience is a mediator of improving physical and psychological symptoms for people with systemic sclerosis (SSc) who participated in a 12-week online peer-led symptom management intervention. METHODS: We conducted a secondary data analysis from a randomized control trial comparing a peer health coached intervention to a waitlist control...

INTRODUCTION: Relatively few studies rigorously examine the factors associated with health systems strengthening and scaling of interventions at subnational government levels. We aim to examine how The Challenge Initiative (TCI) coaches subnational (state government) actors to scale proven family planning and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health approaches rapidly and sustainably through public health systems to respond to unmet need among the urban poor. METHODS: This mixed-methods comparative case study draws on 32 semistructured interviews with subnational government leaders and managers, nongovernmental organization leaders, and TCI Nigeria staff, triangulated with project records and government health management information system (HMIS) data...

Global declines in donor funding present a substantial threat to development financing in low- and middle-income countries. In Nigeria, the resources required to achieve states' health goals surpass existing government budgets and available donor funding, a shortfall that incentivizes efforts to expand nondonor sources of financing, including public-driven cofinancing models. The Challenge Initiative (TCI) in Nigeria implements a demand-led model wherein 13 state governments requested technical support from TCI to adapt and scale up high-impact family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) interventions...

BACKGROUND: Midlife hypertension is associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD), suggesting that blood pressure control may be a therapeutic target for dementia prevention. Given excess hypertension in non-Hispanic Black (NHB) adults, blood pressure control may also reduce ADRD disparities. We describe a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a multicomponent lifestyle-based intervention versus enhanced usual care on cognition among middle-aged NHB adults...

OBJECTIVES: People with SSc often experience fatigue, which significantly affects daily life functioning and quality of life. We aimed to explore participants' experiences of a peer health-coached resilience-building energy management to enhance well-being (RENEW) intervention on symptoms and well-being and to use mixed methods to compare how SSc duration influenced the experiences of participants who had clinically significant fatigue improvement vs those who did not. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 participants from the parent clinical trial randomized to the RENEW intervention...