HERO - Health Education Reaching Out

Project Team: Annette Cashmore, Julian Barwell, Nicola Suter-Giorgini, Joanne Singletary

Partners Involved:  University of Leicester

Summary: HERO is a wide-reaching health education programme developed by GENIE (Genetics Education Networking for Innovation and Excellence) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Leicester in collaboration with and jointly funded by NIHR CLAHRC-LNR.

Based on GENIE’s outreach experience and in line with CLAHRC’s remit to improve health and evaluate the best practical approaches to deliver lifestyle outreach messages, HERO aims to:

• Educate and inspire people to take responsibility for their own health, diet and well-being.
• Promote awareness of the links between an unhealthy diet, a sedentary lifestyle and serious health problems in later life.

Through fun and interactive workshops and public events HERO provides people with the insight to prevent and reduce their risk of developing chronic diseases, such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. HERO is committed to providing adults, families, students and school-children with a basis to appreciate the long-term benefits of regular exercise, a healthy diet and a stress-free lifestyle.

Schools project: HERO is working with three schools and over 800 young people to investigate the best way of getting healthy living messages across to teenagers. In doing this HERO aims to determine the approach that best increases pupils’ knowledge and understanding of how diet and exercise can affect long-term health, and to explore their perceptions, attitudes and understanding of diet and disease. Using experience gained through schools outreach events HERO has designed interactive activities for pupils that are linked to the school curriculum and look at pupil’s own eating and activity habits. These have been delivered by GENIE outreach experts and staff and students from the University at university-based workshops and in the classroom setting. School teachers were also provided with subject-specific knowledge and resources to help them plan their own healthy living lessons. The different educational approaches are being evaluated by pupil assessment to determine changes in knowledge, understanding and attitude. The effectiveness and ease of delivery of these approaches is also being investigated with the aim of producing resources for wider use.

Aim:

• To determine the most appropriate and effective way to deliver healthy lifestyle education to year 8 students to encourage behaviour change.

Further Information:
For more information about this project please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Strat Date: 09/2008 (pilot event), 04/2010 (schools project)                                   Expected End Date: 09/2013

Project Outcomes:
The primary outcome will be the dissemination of the project’s findings through the production of reports for local authorities and educationalists.

We will also seek funding to further investigate the effect of one or two of the approaches on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in a larger cohort and seek to roll out the most efficient and effective training programme to schools.