Health behavior

Lecture 03
 Primary prevention
• Instilling good health habits and changing poor ones is the
task of primary prevention.
• This means taking measures to combat risk factors for illness
before an illness has a chance to develop.
• There are two general strategies of primary prevention.
– The first and most common strategy is to get people to alter their
problematic health behaviors, such as helping people lose weight
through an intervention.
– The second, more recent approach is to keep people from developing
poor health habits in the first place. Smoking prevention pro- grams
with young adolescents are an example of this approach.
• Demographic factors:(Younger, more affluent, better-educated people with low levels of stress
and high levels of social support typically practice better health habits than people under higher
levels of stress with fewer resources (Hanson & Chen, 2007).
• Age : ( health habits are typically good in childhood, deteriorate in adolescents and in
adulthood but improve again in adulthood)
• Values: it effects the practice of health habits (exercise for women may consider desirable in
one culture but undesirable in another)
• Personal control (people who regard their health as their personal control practice better
health habits than people who regard their health as due to chance.
• Social influence: ( peer pressure often leads to smoking in adolescents but may influence
people to stop smoking in adulthood)
• Personal goals: (Health habits are tied to personal goals. If personal fitness is an important
goal, a person is more likely to exercise)
• Perceived Symptoms: Some health habits are controlled by perceived symptoms. For example,
a smoker who wakes up with a smoker’s cough and raspy throat may cut back in the belief that
he or she is vulnerable to health problems at that time.
• Knowledge and Intelligence: The practice of health behaviors is tied to cognitive factors, such
as knowledge and intelligence (Mõttus et al., 2014). More knowledgeable and smarter people
typically take better care of themselves.
 Intervening with Children and
Adolescents
• Socialization: Health habits are strongly affected by early socialization,
especially the influence of parents as both teachers and role models
(Morrongiello, Corbett, & Bellissimo, 2008). Parents instill certain habits in
their children (or not) that become automatic, such as brushing teeth
regularly and eating breakfast every day. Nonetheless, in many families,
even these basic health habits are not taught. Especially in families in which
parents are separated or there is chronic family stress, health habits may
slip through the cracks (Menning, 2006).
• Moreover, as children move into adolescence, they sometimes ignore the
early training they received from their parents. In addition, adolescents are
exposed to alcohol consumption, smoking, drug use, and sexual risk taking,
particularly if their parents aren’t monitoring them very closely and their
peers practice these behaviors (Andrews, Tildesley, Hops, & Li, 2002).
• Using the Teachable Moment
– Many teachable moments arise in early child- hood. Parents can teach their
children basic safety behaviors, such as looking both ways before crossing the
street, and basic health habits, such as drinking milk instead of soda with dinner.
Teachable moments are not confined to childhood and adolescence.
Pregnancy is a teachable moment for stopping smoking and improving
diet (Heppner et al., 2011; Levitsky, 2004). The time period immediately after giving
birth is also a teachable moment for increasing physical activity and regular
exercise, as many new mothers want to get back to their previous level of fitness
and appearance; but, barriers to physical activity need to be addressed as well,
because new mothers may have many new responsibilities, leaving little time for
behavior seen as optional (Fjeldsoe, Miller, & Marshall, 2013; Rhodes et al., 2014).
Adults with newly diagnosed coronary artery disease are especially motivated to
change contributing health habits such as smoking and poor diet.
 Intervening with At-Risk People

• Another vulnerable group is people who are at risk for

particular health problems. For example, people from families
with a familial disorder may know that their personal risk is
higher (Glenn et al., 2011). For example, a pediatrician may
work with obese parents to control the diet of their offspring so
that obesity in the children can be avoided.
 The Health Belief Model
• According to this model, whether a person practices a health behavior depends on
two factors:
– whether the person perceives a personal health threat and
– whether the person believes that a particular health practice will be effective in
reducing that threat.
Perceived Health Threat The perception of a personal health threat is influenced by
at least three factors: general health values, specific beliefs about personal
vulnerability to a particular disorder (Dillard, Ferrer, Ubel, & Fagerlin, 2012); and
beliefs about the consequences of the disorder.
Perceived Threat Reduction Whether a person believes a health measure will
reduce threat has two subcomponents: whether the person thinks the health
practice will be effective, and whether the cost of undertaking that measure
exceeds its benefits (Rosenstock, 1974).
For example, the man who is considering changing his diet to avoid a heart attack
may believe that dietary change alone would not reduce his risk of a heart attack
and that changing his diet would interfere with his enjoyment of life too much to
justify taking the action. So, even if his perceived vulnerability to heart disease is
great, he would probably not make any changes.
 The Health Belief Model Applied to the Health Behavior of
Stopping Smoking

Belief in health threat

General health values
(I am concerned about my health.)
Specific beliefs about vulnerability
(As a smoker, I could get lung cancer.)
Beliefs about severity of the disorder
(I would die if I developed lung cancer.)

Health behavior
(I will stop smoking.)
Belief that specific health behavior can reduce threat
Belief that specific measure can be effective against specific threat
(If I stop smoking now, I will not develop lung cancer.)
Belief that benefits of health measure exceed costs
(Even though it will be hard to stop smoking, it is worth it to avoid the risk of lung cancer.)
 The Theory of Planned Behavior

• According to this theory, a health behavior is the direct result of a behavioral

intention. Behavioral intentions are themselves made up of three components:
attitudes toward the specific action, subjective norms regarding the action, and
perceived behavioral control (Figure 3.2).
Attitudes toward the action center on the likely outcomes of the action and evaluations
of those outcomes.
Subjective norms are what a person believes others think that person should do
(normative beliefs) and the motivation to comply with those normative beliefs.
Perceived behavioral control is the perception that one can perform the action and that
the action will have the intended effect; this component of the model is similar to self
efficacy. These factors combine to produce a behavioral intention and, ultimately,
behavior change.
Criticisms of Attitude Theories

Because health habits are often deeply ingrained and difficult to

modify, attitude-change interventions may provide the informational
base for altering health habits but not always the impetus to take
action (Ogden, 2003).
Moreover, attitude change techniques assume that behavior changes
are guided by conscious motivation, and these approaches ignore the
fact that some behavior change occurs automatically and is not
subject to awareness.
That is, a general limitation of health behavior change models is
the fact that they heavily emphasize conscious deliberative processes
in practicing health behaviors; there is an important role for implicit
automatic processes as well. Perhaps the most obvious example
concerns health habits that are accomplished automatically in
response to a minimal cue, such as putting on a seat- belt when one
gets into a car.