CSP: Lincolnshire Sport
Further Information: Get Active, Feel Good
Lincolnshire Sport has been working with Macmillan to deliver a pilot project that aims to improve outcomes in cancer patients by supporting them to become more active.
The three year Macmillan funded ‘Get Active, Feel Good’ Lincolnshire project will run until November 2017. The project encourages and supports adults in Lincolnshire who have had a cancer diagnosis to lead a more active lifestyle, to improve their physical and mental health, and in some cases reduce the likelihood of cancer recurrence. Aaron and Fiona are employed as Macmillan Physical Activity Practitioners, who give 12 months of behavior change support by visiting people at home and helping them set goals and stick to them. Around 100 patients each year access the programme.
- Effective use of insight, research and validated tools for measuring change (GPAQ, IPAQ, EQ5D, Fatigue scale, the Standard Evaluation Framework)
- Evidence based approaches to person centred behaviour change
- Technology based data collection tools (tablets) ensuring real time data capture, robust follow up, paperless, secure systems that generate reports on demand and bring huge efficiencies to practitioner workloads.
- Patient video blogs over 12 months as well as photo stories to demonstrate progress
- Significant work with clinical partners (cancer nurses in particular) to establish a good flow of appropriate referrals from most parts of the county
- Embedding into other CSP projects and existing infrastructure across the county (Activity Finder, Walking for Health, Exercise Referral, Vitality community classes)
Now into year three and building long term technology support systems for ‘graduated’ patients (beyond 12 months) to maximize adherence to behaviour change and bring efficiencies to the cost per patient.
One of the only Macmillan funded pilot programmes that has captured high levels of follow up data (at 9 and 12 months) demonstrating long term adherence to behaviour change.
Based on the reported outcomes, up to 57 cases of cancer recurrence have been avoided to date. http://www.macmillan.org.uk/documents/aboutus/commissioners/physicalactivityevidencereview.pdf
‘(When discussing the use of tablets and video blogs) I've not seen that done before in any other programmes that I've been linked in with. It tends to stay in people's memories that and as I say with it being new it it’s (pause) well it certainly had the impact on me anyway.
‘Before cancer I think I was a bit of a couch potato... I didn't do anything but I never really did any exercise at all. It's a shame that I've waited until I got cancer and something dramatic that made me realise that I should be exercising and look after myself more’
Independent evaluation carried out by the University of Lincoln found that;
- Participants reported that the programme had positively impacted on their well-being, increased their motivation, and facilitated their social interaction and positivity.
- Levels of fatigue were significantly reduced in participants within the first three months of the programme.
- Participants reported their mobility, self-care and perception of their overall health improved significantly over the course of the programme, with a peak improvement at 9 months.
- Perception of pain and feelings of anxiety and depression reduced significantly
- Results from IPAQ demonstrating increased minutes of activity per week over 12 months are below. (Please note that walking has not been coded ‘out’ as it would be under APS results- we are looking at the person from a holistic point of view.)
‘I needed help building my strength up…and that's how it's gone from there. I think she's (MPAP) made me think positively about erm, actually getting off my backside and doing something. It's so easy to fall into the trap where you're not doing things. It's very easily done…it’s a very easy trap to fall into this cancer business’
‘After treatment a lot of our patients get really lost afterwards. They feel a little bit abandoned because the cancer path way can be so intensive and sometimes so long that that at the end of it, they get told that OK, you're sort of better, off you go… something like this gives them a real focus, to sort of improving and maintaining good health’.