The healthy lifestyle workstream is raising the bar: past, present... Future

Dr Agne Straukiene, consultant neurologist and lead for the healthy lifestyle workstream, gave us a quick soundbite of what her team has accomplished so far, and where they are headed in the future.

Past:

They have surveyed healthcare professionals to understand the current focus on healthy lifestyle practices and advice in clinics.

• There have been 37 responses so far
• If you haven't already filled the very short survey out, please do so here:

Present:

The workstream team is developing a wide-ranging toolkit so that professionals across the UK can feel equipped and confident to run healthy lifestyle clinics for those with MS.

Available so far via MS Academy's website are:

• A pre-recorded 'Disease modifying lifestyle' clinic session
• How-to set up a healthy lifestyle clinic,
• A huge quantity of resources, both those aimed at healthcare professionals and those for people with MS, to equip and enable signposting.

Still in the pipeline are:

• Simple leaflets on nutrition, sleep, stress management and movement handout to people with MS or link to online or via MS app- under development via Leadership workstream at MS Academy.
• A summary of the outcomes from the template clinics held in Devon
• A business case to support the operational side of implementing these clinics

Future:

The ultimate goal is to have healthy lifestyle and self-management built into the core care pathway for MS, from diagnosis onwards

We aim to establish this model of a healthy lifestyle clinic and see it run across the UK:

• These will be spearheaded by the professionals within the workstream team
• We will audit these to understand how the clinics change behaviours and improve quality of life

The workstream is also partnering with other companies to increase education and understanding around lifestyle, environment and non-medical forms of managing MS as a key aspect to treatment.

This includes:

• an educational programme aimed at people with MS with shift.MS
• education for professionals through webinars and MasterClass sessions with MS Academy
• mass education through journal articles including the coming MS supplement within the British Journal for Neuroscience Nursing