Health trainer
Health trainers offer practical support to their clients to change their behaviour and achieve their own health goals.
Working life
Health trainers help their clients to assess their lifestyles and wellbeing, set goals for improving their health, agree action-plans, and provide practical support and information that will help people to change their behaviour. This could include promoting the benefits of:
- taking regular exercise and eating healthily
- reducing alcohol intake
- breastfeeding
- practising safe sex
- stopping smoking
Working as a health trainer, you could:
- help people identify how their behaviours may be affecting their health
- support individuals to create a health plan to help make changes to improve their health
- help individuals to become more knowledgeable about things that can affect their health and wellbeing
- signpost to other agencies and professionals
Stephanie Mascall
Health trainer
I see people come in, feeling desperate and having tried lots of other things but feeling nothing’s worked for them. As we talk I often see that ‘light bulb’ moment where the client starts to think ‘I can do this’!
Who will you work with?
As a health trainer, you’ll be knowledgeable about the health issues that affect the community you are working in. The clients that you work with may be identified from existing community and support groups, through referral (such as from a health professional at a children’s centre) or via self-referral. Your clients will often come from hard-to-reach, disadvantaged groups such as the homeless, travellers and those with drug, alcohol and addiction problems.
While much of your work might be on a one-to-one basis, sometimes you could be working with groups of people, for example delivering group sessions on behaviour change and health improvement.
Health trainers may also be assisted in their work by members of the community who have been trained to be health trainer champions (HTCs are usually volunteers who have undertaken health improvement training at level 2 with the Royal Society of Public Health, and who can help health trainer services to extend their reach within communities).
Where will you work?
Health trainers often work for private companies that provide a health trainer service for the NHS or for a local authority. They may also work directly for the NHS, a local authority or a charity, in the prison service or the armed services.
Want to find out more?
- Find out more about the entry requirements for health trainers
- Find out more about the skills and interests needed by health trainers
- Find out more about training and development for health trainers
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