Health-Related Behavior and Promotion

Health-Related Behavior and Health Promotion

• Health behaviors: Activities performed to maintain/improve health, regardless of perceived health status
• Well behaviors: Actions taken to maintain good health and avoid illness
• Symptom-based behavior: Actions taken when ill to identify the problem and find a remedy
• Sick-role behavior: Activities undertaken to get well after determining illness
• Health behavior practices have shown small improvements over the past decade
• Gender, sociocultural, and age differences are observed in health behaviors
• Health behaviors are fairly stable, but constantly change over time
• Health behaviors are not always strongly tied to each other
• There are different factors influencing health behaviors
• Factors in health related behaviors are interrelated and can make the process of prevention and treatment harder

Lifestyles, Risk Factors, and Health

• Lifestyles of typical people include risks for illness and injury
• Health behaviors are influenced by several factors including: perception of disease threat, value of behavior in reducing threat, and the attractiveness of unhealthful behavior.
• Health behaviors change over time, and are not always consistent
• People change throughout life, and experiences affect health behaviors

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Preventing Illness

• Illness prevention is a result of improvements made in diagnosis and treatment
• Behavioral influence, environmental measures, and preventive medical efforts can improve health behaviors
• Primary prevention involves specific actions to avoid disease or injury
• Secondary prevention identifies and treats illnesses early
• Tertiary prevention reduces lasting damage from disease and promotes rehabilitation

Problems in Promoting Wellness

• Prevention of illness and injury is influenced by many factors that can interfere with effectiveness
• Individual factors can make healthy behaviors less pleasurable than unhealthy ones, and have an impact on cognitive resources and motivation
• Interpersonal relationships/factors can have a direct effect on health behaviors, people with a good health related support or guidance are more likely to change their behaviors.

What Determines People's Health-Related Behavior?

• Heredity influences some health behaviors (e.g., alcoholism)
• Operant conditioning: Acquiring behaviors through consequences
• Types of consequences: Reinforcement (increases the likelihood of a behavior), extinction (eliminates consequences that maintain a behavior), and punishment (suppresses a behavior)
• Modeling: Learning through observation
• Habits: Automatic behaviors not dependent on consequences, but based on antecedent cues
• Social, personality, and emotional factors can also affect health-related behaviors

The Role of Beliefs and Intentions

• The assumption is that people decide intentions/plans before acting
• Attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control determine intentions, which directly lead to behavior
• These factors are important in preventive actions to prevent, treat, or manage health.
• The health belief model is a theory based on the assumption that the likelihood of taking preventive action depends on the analysis of the health problem.

Stages of Change Model

• Stages of change theory emphasizes readiness to change in order to help people progress through successive stages of behavior modification
• The stages are distinct and can be influenced by individual and environmental factors, as well as other factors associated with motivation

Factors in the Community

• People are more likely to adopt health behaviors when encouraged by government or health care agencies
• Health professionals have sometimes incorrect information regarding the health related behaviors of patients which affects advice.
• Lack of funding for public health efforts is a factor influencing the success of large-scale efforts
• Cultural and socioeconomic factors greatly affect preventative interventions.
• Health care is greatly affected by economic considerations, and these priorities need to be balanced.

This quiz focuses on health-related behaviors, including well behaviors, symptom-based actions, and sick-role behaviors. It explores the influence of gender, culture, and age on health habits, as well as the interactions between different health behaviors over time. Test your knowledge on how these factors impact health promotion and disease prevention.