S14-4: Designing a physical activity pathway in healthcare model for Irish Health Services

TL;DR

The paper outlines the design of a physical activity pathway in Ireland's healthcare system to connect patients with physical activity opportunities.

Contribution

The novel contribution is the co-designed physical activity pathway tailored for the Irish public health system with stakeholder input.

Findings

A structured change management process with stakeholder engagement improves pathway implementation success.

The COM-B model and APEASE criteria helped prioritize components for the service design.

The pathway aims to connect patients with community-based physical activity opportunities.

Abstract

There is strong evidence for health benefits of regular physical activity (PA) for preventing non-communicable diseases and reducing risk factors as well as improving mental, physical, and emotional health for those living with chronic diseases. There is not a consistent, coherent mechanism to connect patients in primary care with supports and services to be more physically active currently within the Irish public health service.

To design a physical activity pathway, and identify the supporting infrastructure required to enable implementation across the Irish public health system, with a particular focus on primary care.

Using HSE Change Management Guide, the HSE Healthy Eating Active Living Programme commenced a project to co-design a pathway and identify essential infrastructure to support implementation of the pathway across the Irish public health system. Stakeholders engaged in the co-design process include health professionals, health service planners and managers, Local Sports Partnerships, Sport Ireland as well as the public who are potential service users.

A range of methods including interviews, focus groups and workshops were used to gather insights from stakeholders and potential service users to inform the service design. The COM-B model was used as an underpinning behaviour change theoretical framework to analyse the insights including the use of APEASE criteria to prioritise components for the service design.

Establishing a physical activity pathway in healthcare model in a public health service is a complex process. Using a structured change management process, with a strong focus on stakeholder engagement to facilitate co-design may increase success of implementation.

This work will result in a coherent, consistent, resourced process to connect service users in the Irish public health service with appropriate community based, publicly funded physical activity opportunities.

The Health Services Executive, Ireland