The increasing prevalence of chronic and non-communicable diseases
imposes considerable burden on society meaning that the current acute
biomedical model on which the healthcare sector is built is no longer
suitable or sustainable . The burden associated with chronic conditions
include poor health and wellbeing, non-adherence to treatment,
ineffective resource use and adverse impacts on significant others are
common among the lives of people living with chronic conditions . These
problems can then maintain or worsen their condition, highlighting a
need to target more than just the condition itself when providing
treatment. With a primary focus on illness and disease, many
opportunities for enhancing the health and wellbeing for people living
with chronic conditions are being missed. By building individual
strengths, optimism and resilience, within a supportive social network
and environment, pathways to self-sustaining cycles of positive health
and wellbeing may be triggered and maintained, supporting and
facilitating ongoing clinical treatment. This would prove highly
beneficial for both the individual, surrounding social network and
environment, as well as better supporting the currently failing health
care systems (NHS England, 2019). Critically, although there has been
dedicated focus on pharmacological treatments for chronic and
non-communicable conditions, there has been relatively little focus on
non-pharmacological options . Non-pharmacological opportunities for
people with chronic conditions are now briefly discussed below within
the GENIAL 2.0 framework spanning individual, community and
environmental domains.
Table
2: Potential interventions for people living with chronic conditions
Additional text for Table 2: in people living with chronic conditions
relevant to individual, community and environmental domains.