Making Every Contact Count for Physical Activity with Hackney Community Health Champions

Tackling Inactivity in City and Hackney

This project grew from our longstanding Making Every Contact Count (MECC) training programme for the London Borough of Hackney and the City of London. Our task was to design and deliver a bespoke training for Community Health Champions that equipped them with the skills and confidence to talk about physical activity in their everyday interactions with local people.

With a focus on real conversations and practical action, the training drew from MECC, health inequality data, motivational techniques, and local service knowledge. The interactive and practical sessions aimed not only to inform but empower.

The session combined insight into the benefits of physical activity with an understanding of the demographic factors that can impact engagement, in line with the latest government guidance. Alongside this, we focused on how to have effective conversations about physical activity, using audio clips and practical activties to explore which types of language help build motivation and which ones can shut it donw.

Key insights we explored include:

• People who are most inactive have the most to gain from increasing their activity levels
• Reducing sedentary time through regular movement is just as important as engagement in physical activity or exercise
• The language we use really matters: encouraging 'movement' can be far more effective than encouraging 'exercise', which can feel difficult, unpleasant, or inaccessible for many
• Movement can be fun: dancing while the kettle is boiling is a great example of this!
• A person-centred approach is key: meet people where they are, keep it easy to achieve, and focus on environment

The response from participants was overwhelmingly positive. The training gave them not only a better understanding of physical activity, but also clear strategies to support others in their communitiy to move more.