Grant: Operating Grant: Cancer Prevention Research Grants

The purpose of this study is to offer the services of health coaches to people in low-income neighbourhoods who do not have a family doctor. The health coaches encourage people to participate in cancer screening, to increase their exercise habits, to improve what foods they eat, to lose weight or to stop smoking cigarettes, for example. They help people make realistic plans for what they can do during the following 6 months. The team wants to ensure that health coaches in these neighbourhoods can help people who do not have a doctor just as much as they can help people who do not live in low-income neighbourhoods and who do have a doctor. They have identified about 57 candidate neighbourhoods and will provide health coaching in 18 neighbourhoods. The health coaching will be offered immediately in 9 neighbourhoods and in the remaining neighbourhoods 6 months later, so that researchers can compare results before and after to show that the health coaching really works.