Phaedra-impact

A healthy lifestyle underlies adequate cardiovascular risk management. However, current initiatives to promote a healthy lifestyle are only sparsely connected and often do not involve the patient's environment. To solve this, cardiologists, neurologists, general practitioners, scientists, entrepreneurs, and patients have united in the BENEFIT project. The research  Our mission is to make healthy living fun. Rather than telling people how to behave, we make healthy lifestyle choices appealing: the carrot is mightier than the stick. BENEFIT is an advanced loyalty program that rewards cardiovascular patients for the time and energy spent on healthy lifestyle activities. BENEFIT loyalty points can be earned for a range of health behaviors, such as exercising daily, abstaining from smoking, attending prevention programs, and showing up for health appointments. The BENEFIT program has different levels, ranging from a simple to use card-and-beacon system to an advanced digital platform that allows access to evidence-based lifestyle maintenance interventions, personal coaching, and smart technology. By rewarding everyday lifestyle and adherence behaviors, the program integrates care and non-care settings and facilitates embedding the new lifestyle in everyday life. Our goal is to create a national ecosystem in which evidence-based interventions to promote a healthy lifestyle are embedded in a system that rewards people for taking actions that contribute to such a healthy lifestyle. The central element of this ecosystem is a sophisticated loyalty program that encourages people to live healthy lifestyles for the long term. No more finger-pointing: the very act of rewarding a healthy lifestyle is stimulating! The ecosystem that we provide connects public and private parties, integrates existing care and lifestyle programs, has future-proof financing, and is constantly fed by scientific insights. BENEFIT for all! The origin The BENEFIT program is a public-private ecosystem in a national consortium, aiming to support patients with cardiovascular disease in their own home setting for a long-term healthy lifestyle. The Heart Foundation aims for more people to make healthy choices, so that they feel vital and run less risk of developing (again) cardiovascular diseases, which was one of the themes of the research agenda. Therefore, the Dutch Heart Foundation and ZonMw have collaborated to fund this program.

The best way to maintain a healthy lifestyle for a long time is to teach it young. This certainly applies to those groups where unhealthy behavior is common: lower socioeconomic groups, which are increasingly multi-ethnic. The Research In this program we are studying the causes of unhealthy behavior in ongoing cohort studies, and together with the target group (10-14 years) we are looking for new ways to teach healthy behavior (nutrition, physical activity, sitting and sleeping behavior). We develop innovative interventions that at multiple levels (family, school, neighborhood, city) change the child's environment in such a way that healthy behavior is encouraged and unhealthy behavior is discouraged.  We implement and evaluate in Amsterdam, and disseminate results to other cities. The origin The Heart Foundation aims for more people to make healthy choices, so that they feel vital and run less risk of developing (again) cardiovascular diseases, which was one of the themes of the reserach agenda. With its prevention programs, ZonMw contributes to the improvement of prevention practice, to health gains and to reducing socioeconomic health disparities. Results from research show that healthy behavior cannot be taken for granted, and is strongly influenced by people's social and physical environment and socioeconomic status. Proven effective, innovative and accessible methods to enable people to maintain a healthy lifestyle for a long time are lacking. Therefore, the Dutch Heart Foundation and ZonMw have collaborated to form the program "Gezond leven: goed voor het Hart!". LIKE is one of the projects funded from this program.