Management
Q1. Since employers and health insurers are investing on wellness of employees or members of, such programs tend to fail because behaviors and perceptions don’t seem to change. Although wellness at the workplace is becoming a trend in most companies and health insurers support the idea because it will save them thousands of dollars from hospital bills, hence, making the insurance members physically fit deters the possibilities of being sick. For some reason, such initiatives tend to fail. According to the Trans-Theoretical Model, the reason for programs promoting greater physical activity to fail is because it did not address the need to modify behavior. Under TTM, people move through a series of stages when changing behavior (Prochaska et al., 2008). In the context of persuading people to engage in greater physical activity, the programs designed for such purpose should consider the five stages of behavioral change beginning with pre-contemplation where the people were assumed as not ready.
In this sense, the program should ascertain the readiness of the people to partake in the physical activity program, which will get them to the second stage or being ready. Preparation is also important in the process before getting the people into action. However, the last stage of TTM is maintenance, which means that the program for physical activity should not stop at getting the people to exercise, but there should also be component that will keep the people actively participating. From another perspective, the failure of physical activity programs can be attributed to each individual’s perception about health and personal belief. Getting the people to participate into greater physical activity involves three important factors such as seriousness, susceptibility, and benefits. For instance, people may not get interested to participate in physical activity programs because they do not consider the seriousness of lack of physical activity, its susceptibility to health, which blurs their perception about the benefits (Hayden, 2014).
Q2. It is apparent that Type 2 diabetes is becoming a major concern among school-aged children, but the problem can be addressed effectively through a comprehensive multi-level course of action. On the other hand, constructing an intervention program would require applying the concept of Social Ecological Theory. In theory, the social ecological approach in health promotion stems from consideration of the relationship between factors such as environmental conditions, well being, and human behavior. First, the ecological aspect of the theory relates to the characteristics that comprise the environmental settings, which includes cultural, social, and physical dimensions (Stokols, 1995). In addition, the social ecological constructs of the theory also consider personal attributes such as behavioral patterns, genetic footprint, and psychological disposition.
References
Hayden, J. (2014). Health belief model in Introduction to health behavior theory (pp. 31-44). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Prochaska, J., Butterworth, S., Redding, C., Burden, V., Perrin, N., & Leo, M. et al. (2008). Initial efficacy of MI, TTM tailoring and HRI’s with multiple behaviors for employee health promotion.Preventive Medicine, 46(3), 226-231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2007.11.007
Stokols, D. (1996). Translating social ecological theory into guidelines for community health promotion. American Journal Of Health Promotion, 10(4), 282-297. Retrieved from https://webfiles.uci.edu/dstokols/Pubs/Translating.PDF
Whittemore, R., Melkus, G., & Grey, M. (2004). Applying the Social Ecological Theory to Type 2 Diabetes Prevention and Management. Journal Of Community Health Nursing, 21(2), 87-99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327655jchn2102_03
