Limitations of Lifestyle and Behavior Change Programs for Improving Population Health

Running head: INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PROMOTION
INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PROMOTION
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INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PROMOTION
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1. What are the limitations of a focus on lifestyle and behavior change programs for
improving population health, and what are some alternative approaches?
The approach of behavioral change is known to promote the health by changing the
lifestyle of the individual. The most important thing to assume before changing the lifestyle,
people must understand its impact on health. From the study of Baum and Fisher (2014) from his
article related to sociology of health and illness, has mentioned that health behavior of the person
includes smoking, physical inactivity and having high fat diet. These behavior are the major
reason for the high rate of chronic condition. The author has mentioned various limitation of
behavioral program. The first major limitation of behavior change program is failure in providing
relevant information about the health and lifestyle associated risk related to different behavior.
This has led to adaption of unhealthy habits and increased risk of lethal illness in the growing
population. Baum and Fisher (2014) in their paper has said that modification in lifestyle has
caused adverse effect on the health of individual. Second limitation of the lifestyle and behavior
change program is failure of health promotion policy that does not incorporate the social value of
health. Third limitation is that health behavior is highly influenced by the socioeconomic and
cultural factors. They are creating social inequalities in health of the peoples. Fourth limitation
rely on the socio-economic status of the societies. The program for health improvement have
local and universal strategies, in which people of high economic status have many social and
economic resource are more benefitted. People with low economic status have lower
improvement in health. This is creating inequality in health behavior. Fifth limitation is that these
program fails to have sufficient evidence which is due to lack of timely information to the policy.
It has resulted in low level of positive result. Sixth limitation is that the behavioral health

INTRODUCTION TO HEALTH PROMOTION
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program tends to consider people as ignorant one and assume that people will accept the any
health promotion message. This has deteriorated the health condition of the general public.
Alternative approach for such health inequalities and limitation of the behavioral health
program is by changing the behavior of the individual who are at high health risk by targeting the
risk factor associated with the whole population. In support of this statement, step can be taken
like for example in the manufactured food, if the salt content is reduced, will result in reduction
of blood pressure of the population and will help to reduce the mortality rate because of
cardiovascular disease. Broad strategies are adopted to reduce the socioeconomic disadvantages
by introduction of education, employment and income (Saan & Wise, 2011). Through this health
inequalities can be balanced. Government can address to the low economic group peoples by
providing them all the needy resource for health improvement.
2. What is the importance of community participation from a health promotion
perspective?
Health promotion is the method of enabling the people to improve their own health and to
make self-control on this. (Saan & Wise, 2011). Health promotion has the major goal to improve
the health and reduce the risk factor of the population. Practitioner are required to give response
to the determinant of health. For this, there is need to make a plan and implement it for health
promotion. They require training and need to develop skill to give quality care to the peoples.
Participation of people with common motive will help to promote health in much greater ways.
Hence, community participation will accelerate the health promotion principle for better health
outcome of the peoples. With such view, it is important to involve the people of community to
promote health. The statement is also supported by Gregg and O'Hara (2007) where the author