4) Lay Beliefs and Health Promotion Flashcards
Define lay beliefs.
How people with no specialised knowledge understand and make sense of health and illness. They may reject medical information if it’s incompatible with competing ideas which people consider there is good evidence.
What are the three definitions/perceptions of health in the lay community?
-Negative definition where health equates to the absence of illness (lower socioeconmic class definition)
-Functional definition – health is the ability to do
certain things (older people definition)
-Positive definition – health is a state of wellbeing and fitness (high socioeconomic class definition)
Why might the higher social classes smoke less on average than the lower classes/manual workers?
- Incentives of giving up smoking are more evident for groups who could expect to remain healthy – more able to focus on long term investments
- Can afford quitting products
- Other stress relief mechanisms
What influences illness behaviour? i.e. what influences what treatment you seek
- Culture – e.g. ‘stoical’ attitude
- Visibility or salience of symptoms
- Extent to which symptoms disrupt life
- Frequency and persistence of symptoms
- Tolerance threshold
- Information and understanding (do they know there could be something underlying it)
- Availability of resources
- Lay referral
What is the lay referral system?
The chain of advice-seeking contacts which the sick make with other lay people prior to, or instead of, seeking help from health care professionals. Encouraging or even discouraging people from seeing the doctor.
Why is the lay referral system important?
- Why people might have delayed in seeking help
- How, why and when people consult a doctor
- Your role as a doctor in their health, what so they want you to do for them
- Use of health services and medication
- Use of alternative medicines
What four things influence WHEN people choose to get medical help?
- Symptom experience (really bad vs. okay)
- Symptom evaluation (has it gotten better or worse?)
- Knowledge of disease and treatments (what symptoms should I be experiencing)
- Experience of, and attitudes towards, health professionals
What are three main groups you can divide people who aren’t adhering to treatment?
- Deniers (I don’t have this condition)
- Distancers (It’s not bad enough to require treatment)
- Pragmatists (accept they’ve got it, but manage as a series of acute episodes so don’t bother with preventative treatments)
What is lay epidemiology?
A person with no specialised knowledge comes to conclusions about causation, risk etc. based on what they see and experience. i.e. why did it happen to a certain person at a certain time?
What do we mean when we say health behaviour?
Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness
What do we mean when we say illness behaviour?
Activity of ill person to define illness and seek solution
What do we mean when we say sick role behaviour?
Formal response to symptoms, including seeking professional help.
Suggest some of the main global social causes of ill health.
- Poverty
- Social Exclusion
- Poor Housing
- Poor health systems
What are the three main types of health prevention strategy?
- Primary - aims to prevent the onset of disease or injury (reduce exposure to risk factors)
- Secondary - detect and treat a disease (or its risk factors) at an early stage
- Tertiary - minimise effects of an established disease.
What are some of the issues with evaluating the success of health promotions?
- Many confounding factors
- Some effects won’t be noticed until late on (delay)
- Some effects will wear off quickly (decay)
- Expensive and time consuming
