West Ham football coaches to help drinkers tackle addiction in new health study

The project at Barts Liver Centre will investigate whether exercise can help “hazardous drinkers” to reduce their dependence on alcohol
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Ross Lydall @RossLydall29 January 2019

Problem drinkers are being given the chance to give alcohol the boot with the help of football coaches from West Ham.

A research project at Barts Liver Centre will investigate whether exercise can help “hazardous drinkers” to reduce their dependence on alcohol.

Club coaches will run 12-week sessions at a sports centre in Tower Hamlets. The hope is that the link to football will “destigmatise” the illness and attract participants who would otherwise have been reluctant to seek help.

There is also the hope of reducing the number of alcohol-related admissions to A&E departments.

Professor Graham Foster, who is leading the project at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust, said: “There is a huge number of people who are drinking to dangerous levels. More and more of these people have difficulty with an alcohol addiction.

West Ham football coaches will try to help combat problem drinking (file photo, Getty Images)
Getty Images

“It’s not easy to get people to stop drinking. We need to give them help and support and something else to do with their time.”

Ninety drinkers — both men and women — are being recruited. All participants will get a free 12-month gym pass and a tour of West Ham’s London Stadium. The initiative looks to build on the success of a similar “shape up” scheme run by Watford FC to tackle obesity. This has helped more than 1,000 people since being launched in 2015.

However, Professor Foster said that beating the bottle was likely to be harder. “Alcohol is a very, very addictive drug,” he said. “It’s a very social drug. We do expect it will be a much tougher nut to crack. It’s a pilot study. One of the important things for us is to try to define the group of patients who will derive most benefit.”

"It’s not easy to get people to stop drinking. We need to give support and something else to do with their time" 

Professor Graham Foster

People already attending alcohol addiction services or who have approached their GP for help will be offered the chance to take part. “We want them to have made the first step,” Professor Foster added. Fiona Miller Smith, chief executive of Barts Charity, which is funding the initiative, said: “The results of this study could impact health not only in London, but could have a national bearing on how alcohol-related NHS admissions are handled.”

West Ham said the Active Over Alcohol programme would be managed by its foundation and would use the “power of the Premier League” to attract participants. Twice-weekly sessions start on March 6. Deaths caused by alcohol misuse have been rising steadily since 2015. In 2017, there were 7,697 alcohol-specific deaths in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

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