5. Lay Beliefs; Health Promotion

Question 1

Why is understanding lay beliefs important in medical practice?

Answer 1

They can impact: health behaviour, illness behaviour, compliant/non-compliance with treatment.

Question 2

Distinguish between deniers, distancers, and pragmatists in treatment adherence.

Answer 2

Deniers - don’t accept diagnosis of disease causing them to need the treatment.
Distancers - only half accept diagnosis, downplay how serious it is.
Pragmatist - don’t use preventative medication, only medicate based on acute exacerbation of disease.

Question 3

What are lay beliefs?

Answer 3

Ways people try to understand and make sense of areas in their liver about which they have no specialised knowledge.

Question 4

What are some of the distinctive features of lay beliefs?

Answer 4

They’re from people with no specialist knowledge, socially embedded, and may lead to rejection of specialist knowledge if it is a competing idea.

Question 5

What is the purpose of lay epidemiology?

Answer 5

To try to understand why and how illness happens.

Question 6

Where do ideas about lay epidemiology come from?

Answer 6

Person, familial, and social sources of knowledge.

Question 7

What is the negative definition of health?

Answer 7

Health is the absence of illness.

Question 8

Which groups hold the negative definition of health?

Answer 8

Lower socioeconomic groups.

Question 9

What is the functional definition of health?

Answer 9

Health is the ability to do certain things.

Question 10

What is the positive definition of health?

Answer 10

Health is the state of wellbeing and fitness.

Question 11

Which groups hold the positive definition of health?

Answer 11

Higher socioeconomic groups.

Question 12

What is a health behaviour?

Answer 12

Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness.

Question 13

What is an illness behaviour?

Answer 13

Activity of an ill person to define illness and seek solution.

Question 14

What is meant by the symptom/illness iceberg?

Answer 14

Most symptoms never get to a doctor.

Question 15

What is sick role behaviour?

Answer 15

Formal response to symptoms, including seeking professional help.

Question 16

What is the lay referral system?

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Why is the lay referral system important to be aware of?

Answer 17

75% of those visiting a doctor have discussed their symptoms with another person.

Question 18

What are determinants of health?

Answer 18

Factors that have a powerful and cumulative effect on health of the population as they shape behaviours and risk factors.

Question 19

What are the main global social causes of ill health?

Answer 19

Poverty, social exclusion, poor housing, poor health system.

Question 20

What is primary prevention?

Answer 20

Interventions that aim to prevent the onset of disease or injury by reducing exposure to risk factors.

Question 21

What is secondary prevention?

Answer 21

Interventions that aim to detect and treat a disease at an early stage to prevent progression.

Question 22

What is tertiary prevention?

Answer 22

Interventions that aim to minimise effects of an established disease.

Question 23

What are some health promotion strategies?

Answer 23

Medial or preventive, behavioural change, educational, empowerment, social change.

Question 24

Outline the dilemmas of health promotion.

Answer 24

Ethics of interfering, victim blaming, information doesn’t always give people power, reinforcing negative stereotypes, unequal distribution of responsibility, prevention paradox.

Question 25

What is meant be the ‘Fallacy of empowerment’?

Answer 25

Believing that giving people information gives them power when actually unhealthy behaviours aren’t due to ignorance but adverse circumstances and wider socioeconomic determinants of health.

Question 26

What is the prevention paradox?

Answer 26

Interventions that make a difference at population level may have no effect on the individual.

Question 27

What is the impact of candidacy on health promotion interventions?

Answer 27

People who don’t see themselves as a candidate for a disease are less likely to change lifestyle according to health promotion.

Question 28

Why is it difficult to evaluate the outcomes of health promotion?

Answer 28

It’s tricky to design an intervention, the timing may lead to missing the effect if too early (delay means some interventions take time to have an effect) or if too late (decay the intervention wears off), there are many confounding factors, high cost of evaluation team.