Session 5 - Health Promotion and Lay beliefs

Question 1

What are Lay beliefs?

Answer 1

Constructed by people to understand and make sense of areas in their lives about which they have no specialised knowledge

Question 2

Why is understanding lay beliefs important in medicine?

Answer 2

Lay beliefs can:

• Impact on health behaviour
• Impact on illness behaviour
• Impact on compliance/non-compliance (adherence) with treatment

Question 3

What are 3 perceptions of health?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

How does lay epidemiology explain lay beliefs?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Define health behaviour

Answer 5

Activity undertaken for the purpose of maintaining health and preventing illness

Question 6

Define illness behaviour

Answer 6

Activity of ill person to define illness and seek solution

Question 7

What is lay care?

Answer 7

the use of over the counter medicines

Question 8

What is the lay referral system?

Answer 8

Asking non medical professionals for help and advice regarding symptoms before or instead of a HCP

Question 9

What are the global determinants of ill health?

Answer 9

• Poverty
• Social Exclusion
• Poor Housing
• Poor health systems

Question 10

What is primary prevention?

Answer 10

Reduce exposure to risk factors

Question 11

What is secondary prevention?

Answer 11

Prevent progression

Question 12

What is tertiary prevention?

Answer 12

minimise effects of established disease

Question 13

name 3 health promotion strategies

Answer 13

• Medical or Preventive
• Behaviour Change
• Educational

Question 14

What is the illness iceberg?

Answer 14

Most symptoms never get to a doctor – The ‘Symptom/Illness Iceberg’

Question 15

What are 3 dilemmas raised by health promotion?

Answer 15

1. Ethics of interfering in people’s lives
2. Victim blaming - society at large might be to blame e.g. higher percieved costs of eating a healthy diet
3. Unequal distribution of responsibility e.g. implementing health behaviours often left to women to get their family to eat more fruit

Question 16

What is ‘candidacy’ regarding health promotion interventions?

Answer 16

If people don’t see themselves as a ‘candidate’ for a disease they may not take on board the relevant health promotion messages.

Question 17

What are the 7 principles of health promotion?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Why do Health Promotion campaigns need to be evaluated?

Answer 18

• Accountability
• Ethical obligation to ensure no harm
• Collects evidence that it is effective for future campaigns

Question 19

What are the 3 types of health promotion evaluation?

Answer 19

• Process - assesses process of programme implementation
• Impact - assess immediate effects of intervention
• outcome - assess long term consequences

Question 20

Give 3 reasons behind difficulties in evaluating a health campaign

Answer 20

Difficult because:

1. Design of intervention
2. Possible lag time to effect
3. Many potential confounding factors