One in four Brits have never had a full health check
Lack of time, fear of results and cost concerns stop one in four (27%) of public from getting a health or fitness check
• 30% of women neglect to ever get their health checked, compared to 22% of men
• Worryingly, one in four people aged 65+ have never had a health check
• Liverpool (46%), Cardiff (40%), Sheffield (37%), Edinburgh (37%) and Glasgow (33%) had the highest number of respondents who said they had never had a check-over
• Halfords works with wellness experts to launch the Lifestyle MOT test: https://www.halfords.com/mot/advice/mot-lifestyle-quiz.html
Although car owners are required to have their motor vehicles checked at least once a year(source: 1), the UK public fails to give their own vehicles - their bodies - the same care, with more than a quarter of UK adults claiming to have never had their health or fitness levels checked by an expert.
The survey(source: 2) from retailer and car servicing and repairs experts, Halfords, found that as well as the 27% of Brits who have neglected to ever get their health or fitness checked, a further 32% of adults choose to visit an expert to analyse their health and fitness levels less often than once a year.
The most common reasons people avoided health checks were:
1. Felt the check was unnecessary (23%)
2. Fear of the results (17%)
3. Lack of time available (13%)
4. Concerns about the cost (10%)
5. Embarrassment (5%)
Despite being an age group more likely to experience health concerns, one in three (30%) people aged 55-64, and one in four (25%) people aged over 65 have never had a health check. Those aged 25 – 30 were the most health-conscious group, with 80% of them claiming to have had at least one health check in their lives.
Manchester was the most health-conscious city in the UK, with seven in ten (68%) adults having at least one health check in the last year, followed by 65% of people in both London and Birmingham. This is compared to almost half (48%) of people in Newcastle, 45% of people in Cardiff just one in four (42%) people in Liverpool.
The data also found that at the beginning of 2019, 40% of Brits did plan to book in a health check at some point during the year. However, in the 12 months that followed, 30% of them had never actually got around to going.
Halfords Autocentres Managing Director, Andy Randall, commented on the findings:
“Our survey shows that many of us don’t organise checks with a professional - to review our overall health and wellness - anywhere near as much as we do for our cars. Just like our motor vehicles, sometimes things may seem to be fine, and only after analysis by an expert, do we discover something may require further attention.
“We're urging Brits to look after their own health, both physical and mental, giving this as much, if not more attention than they would their car(s).”
Dr Davina Deniszczyc, Medical Director at Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, emphasised how important health checks are for everyone:
“Health checks enable you to get a detailed picture of your health and identify the necessary interventions to prevent any issues worsening. While the survey found 23% of participants felt health checks were unnecessary, many health issues can go undetected without clinical tests, such as cholesterol or blood pressure. Taking part in a regular health check will allow you to benchmark and monitor your health, setting goals and reducing the impact of more serious health conditions.
“At Nuffield Health, we offer free Health MOTs to all our members, this provides the opportunity for members to sit down with a personal trainer to understand what their body needs and link that to their own targets/goals. Our personal trainers will then build a 12-week plan to help members reach their goal as quickly as possible. We recommend members have a Health MOT every three months, to monitor their progress and help keep them on track.”
Halfords’ launches its new digital Lifestyle MOT test.
To help the nation to live healthier and happier 2020, Halfords has teamed up with four fitness and wellness experts - a personal trainer, a competition-winning bodybuilder, a chartered psychologist, and an NHS GP - to deliver a new digital MOT test for the mind and body. The test involves 20 questions across four core categories and is designed to see how well we are doing inside and out. On completion of the test, which takes fewer than five minutes in total, Lifestyle MOTers will be given an overall pass/fail score plus recommendations or advisories to improve in their lowest-scoring category.
Find out more about the Lifestyle MOT and complete the test yourself here: https://www.halfords.com/mot/advice/mot-lifestyle-quiz.html
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Notes for Editors
Methodology & Sources:
1,https://www.gov.uk/getting-an-mot/the-mot-test
2,Halfords research was informed by a survey of 1,000 UK residents. Figures at each stage have been rounded to the nearest percentage. The questions asked were as follows:
- On average, how often do you get your health or fitness checked over by an expert (whether with your GP, your health insurer, or a personal trainer)? This does not include doctors’ appointments for health issues such as back pain, the flu etc. Please select one answer from the below options.
- Did you plan to get some sort of health MOT (whether with your GP, your health insurer, or a personal trainer) in January 2019? Please select one answer option.
- Only for those who said ‘yes’ to Q2. Did you get this done? Please select one answer option.
- If you have ever put off a health or fitness check over, what is the main reason for this? Please select one answer option
For more information, please contact Rosa Mitchell via rosa.mitchell@wmg.uk.com or call 01423 229107.
About Halfords
Halfords Group plc is a British retailer of car parts, car enhancement, tools, camping and touring equipment and bicycles operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. They also provide MOT, service and repairs in the United Kingdom, through Halfords Autocentre.
About Nuffield Health
Nuffield Health is the UK’s largest healthcare charity. For the last 60 years, Nuffield Health’s experts have been working together to make the nation fitter, healthier, happier and stronger, all for the public benefit.
As an organisation with no shareholders, we invest all our income back into our vision to build a healthier nation. We do this through outstanding day-to-day services in our family of 31 award-winning hospitals, 112 fitness and wellbeing clubs, healthcare clinics, and over 165 workplace wellbeing services, and through our flagship programmes to support communities by widening access.
Through our experts, we link our sites and services up to offer connected healthcare provision spanning from personal training and health MOTs to support people on their fitness journeys, helping patients recover with physiotherapy or emotional wellbeing counselling, or providing hospital treatments for illness and serious conditions like arthritis or cancer.
Nuffield Health delivers unsurpassed standards, with a sector-leading 94% of our hospitals judged good or excellent by national regulators, so it’s no surprise that we’re trusted by the NHS, private medical insurers, employers and the general public to provide exceptional health and wellbeing services to the nation.
But what also makes us different is our commitment to our flagship programmes to widen access, be that improving the lives of hundreds of children with cystic fibrosis through free exercise classes, or by pioneering the world’s largest research project into how exercise can help men recovering from prostate cancer, or by partnering with schools to provide thousands of pupils with free timetabled programmes to improve their health and wellbeing.
Find out more about us and our pioneering models of care: https://www.nuffieldhealth.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.