Strategies to assist people to make Healthy Behavioural Choices

Welcome to the TADS training website. This is a first stop for health professionals across New Zealand and Australia who wish to access a key proven, time efficient, cost effective training method to assist their patients/clients to make healthy behavioural change choices.

What is TADS?

TADS (Training and Development Services) is a New Zealand-born national education and training programme established from the Goodfellow Unit, Dept of General Practice and Primary Health Care, University of Auckland in 1995.

It is a unique, well researched training programme based on an holistic person focused approach and supporting primary health care principles of self determination and prevention. The purpose of the training is to facilitate and  interact early with individuals  before visible symptoms of behavioural problems appear. This assists  people to make healthy lifestyle decisions relating to for example tobacco smoking, alcohol, other drugs, gambling, diabetes and mild to moderate mental health risks such as depression and anxiety.

“People would sooner die than change - and most do”

Mark Twain

TADS teaches behavioural change strategies and communication skills focusing on early prevention and personal identification of potentially risky behavioural practices, utilising specifically developed and validated TADS communication resources and tools for this purpose. It is person driven rather than practitioner driven from the outset thus ensuring stress buster consultations for patient/ client and health professional.  

Because if its’ unique generic and holistic content the package of skills can be adapted to a wide range of adult and youth occupational and cultural settings utilising the action research findings from its early roots in a highly reputable and well established University.