Session 5 - Health Promotion and Lay beliefs Flashcards
What are Lay beliefs?
Constructed by people to understand and make sense of areas in their lives about which they have no specialised knowledge
Why is understanding lay beliefs important in medicine?
Lay beliefs can:
- Impact on health behaviour
- Impact on illness behaviour
- Impact on compliance/non-compliance (adherence) with treatment
What are 3 perceptions of health?
Negative definition - Health equates to absence of illness
Functional definition - health is ability to do certain things
Positive definition - Health is a state of wellbeing and fitness
How does lay epidemiology explain lay beliefs?
Epidemiology is fallible, and is based on randomness and fate
Therefore if person knows a smoker who lives a long healthy life, tempted to think there is no link between smoking and premature death
Define health behaviour
Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness
Define illness behaviour
Activity of ill person to define illness and seek solution
What is lay care?
the use of over the counter medicines
What is the lay referral system?
Asking non medical professionals for help and advice regarding symptoms before or instead of a HCP
What are the global determinants of ill health?
- Poverty
- Social Exclusion
- Poor Housing
- Poor health systems
What is primary prevention?
Reduce exposure to risk factors
What is secondary prevention?
Prevent progression
What is tertiary prevention?
minimise effects of established disease
name 3 health promotion strategies
- Medical or Preventive
- Behaviour Change
- Educational
What is the illness iceberg?
Most symptoms never get to a doctor – The ‘Symptom/Illness Iceberg’
What are 3 dilemmas raised by health promotion?
- Ethics of interfering in people’s lives
- Victim blaming - society at large might be to blame e.g. higher percieved costs of eating a healthy diet
- Unequal distribution of responsibility e.g. implementing health behaviours often left to women to get their family to eat more fruit
What is ‘candidacy’ regarding health promotion interventions?
If people don’t see themselves as a ‘candidate’ for a disease they may not take on board the relevant health promotion messages.
What are the 7 principles of health promotion?
EPHISM
Empowering - Enables individuals to assume more power over health
Participatory - Involving all concerned at all stages of process
Holistic - Fostering physical, mental, social and spiritual health
Intersectoral - Involves collaboration of agencies from relevant sectors
Equitable - Guided by concern for equity
Sustainable - Changes can be maintained once funding ended
Multi strategy - Uses variety of approaches
Why do Health Promotion campaigns need to be evaluated?
- Accountability
- Ethical obligation to ensure no harm
- Collects evidence that it is effective for future campaigns
What are the 3 types of health promotion evaluation?
- Process - assesses process of programme implementation
- Impact - assess immediate effects of intervention
- outcome - assess long term consequences
Give 3 reasons behind difficulties in evaluating a health campaign
Difficult because:
- Design of intervention
- Possible lag time to effect
- Many potential confounding factors
