Application of Integrated Theory of Health Behavior Change (ITHBC) in Health Promotion Challenges
Application of Integrated Theory of Health Behavior Change (ITHBC) in Health Promotion Challenges
Introduction
Theoretical models of Nursing encompass a broad scope when it comes to applying such theories into a certain issue or concern. A nurse practitioner would be able to achieve his or her professional goals when applying the theories involved towards a better outcome of the patient. Thus, these theories may also be used to address various issues and concerns within the Nursing practice based which category the theory belongs to. However, outside the categorical scope of nursing theories, there is one theory that can be used in addressing a specific issue. It is the Integrated Theory of Health Behavior Change or ITHBC, which was developed by and emerged instead of the usual systemic literature review to change a person’s behavior in relation to his health (Ryan, 2011).
The selected theory is suitable in addressing issues specifically with the challenges in health promotion due to barriers, needs for behavioral change, unhealthy lifestyle of the people. The idea of this theory is to provide education and knowledge to patients who have unhealthy lifestyle issues such as smoking, lack of exercise, and even unhealthy food intake. The ITHBC is suggesting that the change patient’s health behavior can be enhanced and improved through by adopting beliefs and knowledge, increasing abilities and self-regulation skills, and through enhancement of social facilitation (Ryan, 2011). Personal behavior is a major factor that directly influences the individuals’ health outcome, which, if once compromised, might lead to the development of chronic disease such as diabetes of heart disease. The application of this theory towards better health outcomes of the patient is essential in the overall health promotion as well as addressing the involved challenges that were formerly mentioned. The barriers in health promotion can be broad, but focusing on specific factors such as the patient’s lifestyle would help in achieving better health behavior. However, we argue that such challenges in promoting health can be addressed through the application of ITHBC that will decrease the prevalence of diseases by employing a person-centered care approach.
Nursing profession does not only encompass providing proper care to their patient, but also aims to promote a healthier lifestyle. The health promotion approach will help in disease prevention as well as help in developing better health outcomes of the patients. This discussion aims to address the health behavior issues that influence the challenges in health promotion nursing practitioners. Thus, such challenges contribute to the increasing rate of chronic diseases.
The emergence of the globalization provides significant impacts, not only in every nation’s economy, but also in the health behavior of many people. The fast-pased lifestyle calls for the development of new habits that affect the person’s overall behavior. For instance, a person’s personal behavior represents an unhealthy lifestyle due to high demands at work. Therefore, there is a higher chance that the person would go for a quick lunch by purchasing a fast food product, which are known to be unhealthy. In addition, the challenges in promoting health that contributes to the development of chronic diseases include overcrowding in the urban places, environmental changes, and unhealthy food products. Although there is no direct effect in the development of such diseases, poverty and exacerbation of global inequality also serve as barriers in promoting health on a global basis (Mc Michael & Butler, 2012).
The nursing profession should care about the challenges in promoting health as nursing plays essential roles when it comes to achieving an improved public health (Kemppainen, Tossavainen & Turunen, 2012). Based upon the practice, nurses’ focus towards health promotion was about preventing the occurrence of disease as well as changing the health behavior of every person with respect to achieving a healthy lifestyle. However, nurses’ roles as one of the promoters of health is a challenging, as they usually hold multi-disciplinary knowledge and even experience promoting health in practicing their profession.
Furthermore, the nursing profession should care about these challenges due to the nature of their work, which include consultation, patient education, follow-up treatment, and illness prevention (Kemppainen, Tossavainen & Turunen, 2012). Having these challenges also means that nurses should apply various concepts of health promotion that were developed in order to give emphasis to the promotion itself on a community-based approach on health and social politics. Therefore, it is important that nurses give attention to the significance and challenges encompassing the health promotion to the community towards prevention of chronic diseases.
Various literatures were published in relation to the importance of health promotion using various approaches. Cugelman, Thelwall and Dawes (2011) said that many researchers have developed intervention strategies in order to encourage the public to adopt a healthy lifestyle. This intervention technique aims to provide knowledge and education to the importance of reducing their alcohol drinking, increase their physical activities and exercise, and even manage their weight better by being health conscious with their food intake. The motivational approach in promoting healthy lifestyle may provide broad and better effects to human health, especially the prevention of the chronic disease development. However, these strategies may sound easy, but due to the presence of health promotion barriers, such strategies become more challenging to the nursing practitioners.
According to Saulat Jhan (2012), health promotion challenges encompass multiple factors. There are many countries that do not have the capacity in practicing health promotion. One of the significant challenges is the building of workforce that will help in disseminating the education and awareness about healthy living. Notably, the challenge of promoting health is being influenced by the dominant industries that contribute to the increasing availability of unhealthy products. Additionally, the industry of alcohol drinks and tobacco also contributes to the challenges in promoting health.
Relatively, the increasing recognition of ethics may have been a factor when it comes to its role in promoting healthy lifestyles. It is indeed that these industries contribute to the economic development, to which it contrast the goals of achieving improved health of the community. It was also argued that promoting the health of the people must be based upon the practical reasons, which will help in understanding the very purpose of health promotion, including its benefits. Thus, its purpose should aim to engage the people with many reasons about how and why people should adopt the values incorporated in health promotion. That is because; such values will not only provide better health outcomes, but it will also help in changing the current personal and health behaviors of the people.
There are stakeholders who are involved in health promotion. The diversity of the population would help in identifying the stakeholders of the health promotion. The issue of challenges in relation to health promotion involves the individuals who have unhealthy lifestyles, individuals who hold family background of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and lung disease (Liu et al., 2012). The stakeholders also include external factors, such as the industries that promote unhealthy products such as the tobacco industry, alcoholic drinks manufacturers, and the fast food industry, which the unwanted eating habits, emerges. Additionally, the government could be the one of the major stakeholders in addressing the health promotion challenges as it has the capability to create regulations against increasing barriers in promoting the public health. There will be significant effects to these stakeholders once the challenges and barriers have been addressed. For instance, the profitability of industries involved may be reduced once there is a countrywide improvement in the personal health behavior of the population involved. Thus, there is a chance that chronic disease occurrence may be reduced due to healthy living. On the part of the government, there may be laws that will regulate the distribution and selling of unwanted products that influence the people’s health. Moreover, the government might need to extend their efforts when it comes to health promotion.
Application of ITHBC to Health Promotion
As previously mentioned, the theory that is going to be used for the application is the Integrated Theory of Health Behavior Change or ITHBC, which is suitable in addressing issues in nursing profession, such as the challenges in health promotion due to barriers, needs for behavioral change, unhealthy lifestyle of the people. This theory aims to improve the person's health behavior towards the prevention of chronic illnesses as well as it helps in health promotion of community. The application of this theory is a challenge, as the people’s behavior when it comes to health may have already been part of their everyday life. However, the situation could become challenging due to the existence of the external factors that influence a person’s health behavior, such as economically-influenced lifestyle, unlimited use of both alcoholic drinks and tobaccos, and even the dominance of big companies that operate fast food chains. Conversely, all of these barriers could no longer be treated as part of the challenges once the health behavior of a person has been changed.
Both the healthy people and the individuals who have chronic disease hold opportunities in improving their health through regular engagement in activities that aim to promote healthier lives. This is a behavior change method that is similar to the process, which is used in managing chronic diseases. For instance, an individual with lung disease who smoke is an example of a person who needs health behavior change. On the other hand, individuals who are healthy, but smoke, also need to change or remove such behavior in order not to develop any potential disease related to smoking.
Moreover, this theory can help in resolving the health promotion challenges and their effects to the people’s health. Based upon the goal of health promotion, it may require people to initiate behavior change as well as to maintain a good health status. Included in the change goal are exercise and other physical activities, stress management, good nutrition, reduction of alcohol consumption, and cessation from smoking.
Person centered interventions would serve as the strategy in the application of ITHBC in order to address both behavior change, needs and health promotion challenges of the practitioners. In fact, there are various evidences showing that this intervention strategy is known to be more effective as compare to the usual intervention approach when it comes to facilitating the change in health behavior (Ryan, 2011). Being engaged in healthy behavior is realized in a short-term of the strategy’s application. Thus, this changed behavior will lead and influence the improvement of health status, which may remain over time.
There could be some other strategies that can be used in the application of ITHBC to health promotion challenges. However, a person-centered approach will directly increase the person’s knowledge and beliefs (Ryan, 2011). In addition, this strategy will increase an individual’s skill when it comes to self-regulation and positively affects his social facilitation. Furthermore, the strategy has been in used to developed communication strategies and behaviors, which promote mutual and shared understandings as well as developing shared decision making in changing the health behavior of a person.
The implementation of the strategy can be done in various ways. The strategy will focus on the person as the expert when it comes to his own life, which would make the person realize that his full cooperation in the process would be the key to the intervention’s success. Based on the identified challenge, the strategy will be primarily implemented in a community level. In this case, the behavior change can focus specifically to those who have chronic diseases and will be followed by individuals who are willing to change their health behavior. Therefore, practitioners will be able to provide a more personal and effective education to the people. Thus, it will enable them to increase their social facilitation.
The implementation of person-centered strategy will also change their knowledge and beliefs that have a major influence on their self-efficacy. Another approach, to which the strategy will be implemented, is by conducting a focused assessment, to which the person will be asked about his knowledge of chronic disease, including the factors that will help in chronic illness prevention. The content of the strategic application will also be based upon the evidence of their knowledge and how they are likely to change in a gradual process. The final evaluation of the outcome will take a number of months after the intervention has started. Thus, the evaluation will include the person’s acquired knowledge about chronic disease and most especially, the changed behavior will be evaluated based on the health outcomes of the person.
One of the major ethical aspects in the application of this strategy is the confidentiality issue, to which the patient or person’s personal information should not be shared with any third party that has no direct participation in the intervention process. Changing the behavior of the person must take extra considerations when it comes to personal life, which may involve actions that could be offensive to the patient once forcibly changed. Additionally, the practitioner must also employ an empathetic understanding, to which the practitioner must be able to sense the person’s feelings.
Conclusion
The current lifestyle of the people may have been influenced by different factors that lead them to exercise unhealthy behavior. People nowadays are more inclined to fast food products that are known to contribute to some of the chronic diseases. Promoting health within the community is an approach that will reduce the possible increase of various diseases, but also a challenging task due to the presence of barriers such as the dominance of fast food companies and the availability of alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. ITHBC and the technique that was chosen to address the health promotion challenges may reduce the potential effects of being exposed to these barriers. Most especially, the chosen theory, along with its application through chosen strategy will help in changing the health behavior of a person; thus, decrease the potentiality of acquiring chronic disease.
References
Cugelman, B., Thelwall, M., & Dawes, P. (2011). Online Interventions for Social Marketing Health Behavior Change Campaigns: A Meta-Analysis of Psychological Architectures and Adherence Factors. J Med Internet Res, 13(1), 17.
Jahan, S. (2012). Health Promotion: Opportunities and Challenges. Biosafety Health Education, 01(02).
Kemppainen, V., Tossavainen, K., & Turunen, H. (2012). Nurses' roles in health promotion practice: an integrative review. Health Promotion International, 28(4), 490-501.
Liu, J., Davidson, E., Bhopal, R., White, M., Johnson, M., Netto, G., Sheikh, A. (2012). Adapting health promotion interventions to meet the needs of ethnic minority groups: mixed-methods evidence synthesis. Health Technology Assessment, 16(44).
McMichael, A. J., & Butler, C. D. (2012). Emerging health issues: the widening challenge for population health promotion. Health Promotion International, 21(Supplement 1), 15-24.
RYAN, P. (2011). Integrated Theory of Health Behavior Change. Clinical Nurse Specialist, 23(3), 161-170.
