Jennifer Percival joins Slimming World's Specialist Advisor Panel

Jennifer Percival, one of the UK’s leading health education trainers and an internationally recognised expert on smoking cessation, has joined Slimming World’s specialist advisor panel to advise on the development of the company’s public health programme.

Slimming World’s specialist advisor panel brings together leaders in a range of obesity and behaviour change disciplines including nutrition, physical activity, psychology and child and adult health.
 
Jennifer is a qualified nurse, midwife, health visitor, person centred counsellor and health education trainer.  Working as an independent training consultant, she has lectured in over 30 countries and is best known for providing motivational master classes for professional staff whose work includes supporting people struggling to change their lifestyle.
 
She has provided expert advice to the Department of Health, the Open University, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and many hospital and community trusts. In 2013 she wrote and delivered the RCN national course, ‘Making every contact count – Having the difficult conversation’ which was adapted in 2014 to become a RCN online teaching resource.

Dr Jacquie Lavin, Head of Nutrition and Research at Slimming World says: “We are delighted that Jennifer is joining Slimming World’s specialist advisor panel.

“We consult our specialists on developments and policy changes to make sure that our programmes around healthy eating, behaviour change and increasing activity levels are all in line with current best practice, and to gain advice regarding development of our research portfolio in line with emerging public health issues.

“Jennifer shares our ethos of imbedding compassion and understanding when developing programmes to support people who struggle with changing their behaviour to lead healthier lives and we are really looking forward to working closely with her.”

Commenting on her appointment, Jennifer said: "I accepted the invitation to be a special advisor for Slimming World because, although the long-term benefits of being a healthy weight are understood, many health professionals simply do not have the time to provide the ongoing support the majority of overweight people need to help them reach and maintain their ideal weight.

“I've seen for myself just how well the Slimming World programme works and I'm looking forward to sharing this information with my nursing colleagues."