More Can Be Done At National Level: The CHARMING project's Impact Case Study

Co-production of Promising Interventions to Support Multiple Behaviour Change in Socially Deprived Communities (CHARMING) is a project to co-produce interventions supporting multiple behaviour change in socially deprived communities. It focuses on the ‘big four’ behaviours: unhealthy diets, smoking, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol consumption.

The CHARMING project was awarded a grant by UEA Health and Social Care Partners in 2021 with the aim to identify promising interventions (ideas) to support multiple behaviour change in socially deprived communities to inform practice innovation and research post-project.

In 2020 in Norfolk and Suffolk:

• Obesity led to > 27,000 hospital admissions
• Smoking led to > 28,000 hospital admissions (NHS Digital)
• Excessive alocohol consumption led to 10,000 hospital admissions (Norfolk Insights and Suffolk Observatory)

The threat is much higher in socially deprived communities. People in these communities are much more likely to engage in all four unhealthy behaviours (King’s Fund, Clustering of Unhealthy Behaviours over Time, 2012).

Behavioural risk factors largely explain the 19-years difference in healthy life expectancy and two times higher years of life lost from all causes between low-income and the most affluent communities (Marmot Review Ten Years On, 2020, Steel et al., 2018).

People in the most deprived areas spend nearly a third of their lives in poor health; worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic (King’s Fund, What is Happening to Life Expectancy in England? 2021).

In socially deprived communities, behavioural risk factors can present as coping mechanisms to mental ill health and markers of distress and poverty (Hanson et al., 2019).