Karen Collins
PART 2 OF 3 POSTS
Does simply knowing the priority messages about cancer risk make it easy to start including these in health-care visits and programs? Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Health-care professionals often struggle to find easily accessible, free or low-cost tools and resources to share this information effectively.
Sheena Patel, MS, RDN, AICR’s Director of Nutrition Programs, walked workshop participants through several evidence-based, free tools that can help, including the following two from AICR.
Cancer HealthCheck from AICR provided part of the introduction to our workshop. Participants tried out this free online tool, answering a brief set of questions about their own eating and lifestyle habits. AICR’s Cancer HealthCheck is a helpful conversation-starter health-care professionals can use with patients and clients to gauge where to begin discussions about their choices. This tool can also be something people come back to again and again to see the progress they are making and select the next area for their attention.
The Healthy10 Challenge helps people find a step-by-step path to shaping good intentions into everyday habits. The 10 week challenge is built on established principles of behavior change and learnings from AICR’s decades of providing educational resources to health professionals and the public.
Ms. Patel showed workshop participants how each week in the Healthy10 Challenge adds skills that help people move closer to meeting the AICR Cancer Prevention Recommendations. Some weeks focus on finding ways to include more physical activity and replace too much sitting time. Others center on specific aspects of healthy eating, like expanding amounts or variety of vegetables and fruits, including less red meat, more whole grains and beans and finding replacements for sugar-sweetened beverages.
Health-care professionals are using the Healthy10 Challenge in a variety of ways. The energy in the room really started soaring as Ms. Patel shared some examples of how dietitians and other professionals are currently using the Healthy10:
- in their work with individuals
- in cancer survivorship groups
- in worksite wellness programs, and more.
