A research project is under way in order to examine the possibilities that people could be encouraged to change their damaging or unhealthy behaviours. The project is being lead by an Irish scientist, Dr Molly Byrne who is a health psychologist and lecturer ant NUI Galway and she believes that these types of interventions could be life saving to people in the long run.

She intends to first focus on constructing avenues to best help people to change their lifestyle who have issues related to heart disease and diabetes. Dr Byrne believes that the significantly increasing numbers of health problems in this country are because of our unhealthy habits and behaviours.

Speaking about this Dr Byrne said “There is powerful evidence that changing people’s health-related behaviour for example, smoking, poor diet, excessive alcohol consumption, lack of exercise, failure to screen for illness and risky sexual practice, can impact positively on leading causes of mortality and morbidity, such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.”

This new project intends to use resources and research from the National Clinical Care Programme in Diabetes, the HSE Health and Social Care Professions Education and Development Unit and University College London’s Centre for Behaviour Change. The Health Research Board will be funding the research as part of a €9 million investment into health research in Ireland.