Health Champions and Their Circles of Influence as a Communication Mechanism for Health Promotion

Health Champions are a growing component within the British public health workforce and their roles are now emphasised within the coalition’s Government’s public health strategy. However, there is the need for further exploration of the way in which Health Champions use interpersonal communication within their roles. This paper reports on the findings from a mixed method evaluation of one Health Champion programme in North East England. A key finding was the way in which Health Champions used circles of influence to communicate health knowledge and to try to achieve behaviour change, starting with themselves in the centre of their circle and then moving outwards to influence others such as family, friends and colleagues through their social networks. The paper argues that health champions act as healthy role models within their own circles of influence to successfully communicate health knowledge to those around them.