Britons back more efforts to talk about health and wellbeing, including chats about nutrition and mental health, new research suggests.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) study found that, contrary to public belief, there was strong backing for initiatives promoting discussions around wellbeing.
There was also high public support for more training for staff in schools, workplaces and gyms.
The report highlighted the UK's current public health crisis, which it said was marked by declining healthy life expectancy and a rise in chronic conditions like diabetes and persistent pain.
It attributed the crisis largely to increasing obesity rates and prevalent unhealthy behaviours such as excessive alcohol consumption and smoking.
The strain on the NHS was evident, with long waiting lists often leading to worsening conditions before treatment could be accessed, the authors said.
A wider roll-out of initiatives like Making Every Contact Count (MECC), which encouraged opportunistic conversations about health, could be a potential solution to the growing crisis, they said.
With MECC, staff are trained to have short and informal conversations with the aim of prompting behaviour and lifestyle changes in areas such as exercise, food, alcohol, the menopause and mental health.
The report called for the widespread rollout of MECC across everyday settings including workplaces, care homes, gyms, and schools.
A survey of more than 1,700 members of the public for the report found 64 per cent agreed that employers or managers should receive training, while 69 per cent thought the same about teachers and education staff.
Some 66 per cent agreed that staff in gyms or sports clubs should be trained, and 76 per cent thought the same for community health staff such as physiotherapists and pharmacists.
An evaluation of MECC for mental health in NHS North East and Yorkshire found that it promoted more than 38,500 conversations about mental health every two weeks.
In his foreword to the report, William Roberts, chief executive of the RSPH, said: “We urgently need to implement preventative public health measures to encourage healthy lifestyles and address health concerns early on.
“Whether it is walking to work more or switching to low alcohol alternatives, the public need to be supported in how to make small healthy choices that can quickly add up to significant improvements in outcomes.”
He added: “There are millions of conversations that happen everyday that could be so much more impactful if health came up.
“There’s a perception that as a nation we prefer shying away from talking about our health and wellbeing. We need to move away from this and get talking.
“Early interventions like MECC that encourage people to make healthier choices will be key to moving to a truly preventative approach.
“Prevention in its truest form is about empowering the public to stay well and out of hospitals.
“Making that a reality will mean embedding the ethos of prevention across society through interventions like MECC.”
