Four simple questions can save millions of lives

Four simple questions can save millions of lives

New WHO manual says all primary healthcare workers can help reduce their patients’ risks of noncommunicable diseases

Many patients who visit their primary healthcare providers are worried about their health – but don’t know what contributes to their risk of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

In Europe and Central Asia, NCDs lead to 8 million deaths annually, that is 90% of all deaths in the WHO European Region. However, according to some studies, 95% of patients don’t get any advice on NCD risks when they visit a primary care facility.

To help break this trend, a new WHO manual called “BRIEF: Integrated Brief Interventions for Noncommunicable Disease Risk Factors in Primary Care” will be jointly launched by two WHO Offices on 15 November.

[TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH EVENT, SEE INFORMATION BELOW]

There is evidence that brief interventions are effective. For example, a recent analysis demonstrated that recommendations to eat healthier given by health workers to patients in primary care settings led to an increase in consumption of fruits, vegetables and fibre and a decrease in consumption of total fat, with a consequent reduction in serum cholesterol levels.

Questions that save lives

One of the proposed tools is a simple questionnaire that helps health workers determine their patients’ NCD risks and make shared decisions and chart a plan on how to change the patient’s exposure to those risks

The following four simple questions can elicit enough detail to help change the course of a patient’s life for the better:

  • How soon after you wake up do you smoke your first cigarette?
  • How often do you consume sugary food/drinks a week?
  • How often do you have a drink containing alcohol?
  • How much time do you usually spend sitting or reclining on a typical day?

Patients are not informed about risks of cancer or heart disease

“Smoking, alcohol use, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets are the biggest contributors to ill health in our region. We need to use every opportunity we have to address them”, said Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, a.i. Head of the WHO European NCD Office.

“But many health systems across the WHO European Region face challenges to adequately inform people about these risks, to measure them and to give advice on how to avoid them. With this BRIEF manual, we are trying to change this situation and use every contact with Primary Health Care settings to address NCD risk factors”.

“Scaling up these services will require addressing common barriers in primary health care such as expanding the scope of work of family doctors and nurses, addressing workload issues to make time for counselling, expanding the team to include behavior change specialists, understanding who would benefit more from such interventions, and strengthening the links between primary healthcare and community outreach. This is why we are so  happy to co-host the launch of this very important and pragmatic manual so that we can focus both on the WHAT and the HOW simultaneously”, said Dr Melitta Jakab, Head of the WHO European Center for PHC that will launch the BRIEF manual with the NCD Office.

BRIEF manual for any health worker

WHO/Europe will launch the new manual on Tuesday, 15 November. It is an innovative toolkit for health professionals and decision makers that explains how brief interventions (consultations) led by any health worker in primary care during can reduce patients’ NCD risks and save millions of lives in countries of the WHO European Region. It also flags the need for wide-ranging organizational and system support for brief interventions to be an effective tool to tackle NCDs.

The BRIEF manual is focused on 5 risk factors:

  • physiological risk factors related to increased body mass index (BMI),
  • tobacco use,
  • alcohol consumption,
  • unhealthy eating,
  • and physical inactivity.

The BRIEF manual gives an opportunity for any health system to become an important source of health measurement and advice that will improve health and well-being in all countries of the WHO European Region.

How to log in to the BRIEF manual launch event

The hybrid launch event will take place in Almaty, Kazakhstan on 15 November 2022 09:30 – 11:00 CET. To participate online, please use this link to register.

For further enquiries, please contact

Igor Kryuchkov

Communications consultant

WhatsApp +7 916 104 8063

Tel. +995 598 21 79 11

WHO European Office for Prevention and

Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD Office)


This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com


BRIEF manual press note v3 clean RUS

If you would rather not receive future communications from WHO Regional Office for Europe, please go to https://optout.ne.cision.com/en/oq6AQNU4uBoEXAn9MDm8JL1cYZrNoEXFmvSZHZ4DRSsQTuSQP7bPMQ9aEnmRPCEBKQitS9WxRtdEdt7Wfi2sSVGc7pkBL5N8MJbA2TtchMFStkF73taFQw39xHnbLF24FtZ.
WHO Regional Office for Europe, Marmorvej 51, Copenhagen, 2100 Denmark

ARTICOLI RECENTI
Video