The Science behind Peer Health Support (BETTER Women 2/5)

How do you design a study to test whether peer support actually works? In this episode, we dive into the nuts and bolts of the BETTER Women research project - a randomized controlled trial examining whether trained volunteer peer health coaches can help people stick with their health goals long-term. We explore the three study sites, learn about recruiting and training participants across different communities, and discover the complexity behind implementing prevention programs in real-world primary care settings. From data collection to community engagement, this is research designed to change how we think about healthcare.

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More episodes in this series:

• Trailer
• Episode 1: Going “Upstream” to Prevent Chronic Disease

Related research:

• Assessing the effectiveness of “BETTER Women”, a community-based, primary care-linked peer health coaching programme for chronic disease prevention: protocol for a pragmatic, wait-list controlled, type 1 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial
• Improving chronic disease prevention and screening in primary care: results of the BETTER pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial.
• Results from the BETTER WISE trial: a pragmatic cluster two arm parallel randomized controlled trial for primary prevention and screening in primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic

Links:

• The BETTER Women project
• Canadian Cancer Society
• Women's College Hospital