Health Advancement and Promotion Method

Question: Discuss about the Health Advancement and Promotion Method. Answer: Introduction: Unhealthy diet poses health risks and contributes to the burden of disease. It paves a way to many disorders with negative health outcomes like overweight, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and prone to heart disorders. According to World Heart Federation, there are approximately 16 million and 1.7 million deaths due to low consumption of vegetable and fruits (1). According to World Health Organization (WHO), there is high consumption of trans-fatty acids and saturated fats that is greatly linked to the heart diseases like coronary heart disease (2). According to a report released by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), in Australia, there is consumption of around 32 kg of chocolates in a year studied in 40,000 Australians. On a score of 100, Australia ranked 61 in the CSIROs Health Diet Score Survey (3). The young people are more addicted to consumption of unhealthy food items like burgers, pizzas and high calorigenic foods. They are addicted to sedentary lifestyle with lack of physical exercise and less consumption of nutritional foods. This poor diet is a major global health concern that is affecting the lives of millions of people and is the greatest risk to health worldwide. According to WHO report on unhealthy diet, there is high amount of salt intake and fat intake that is linked to risk for cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes (4). The European Region has the highest amount of fat consumption like saturated fatty acids (SFA) with more than 40% total intake. The high unhealthy diet consumption worldwide calls for high priority to address this health issue on a global basis. As the statistics show that people worldwide are highly addicted to unhealthy foods with low consumption of vegetables and fruits, this heath behaviour is highly important and also contributing to the burden of disease. The Health belief Model (HBM) is an approach to health behaviour change that contribute to the prevention and management of this health behaviour of unhealthy diet consumption. According to HBM, when people participate in healthy behaviours like healthy eating that are greatly influenced by beliefs, there is likelihood of an action that would result into a perceived benefit. This benefit would increase and overcome the barriers or resistance to action providing positive health outcomes based on their health beliefs (5). The method adopted for conducting the interview was a face-to-face personal interview. This method was conducted via a survey that helped to target a specific person for the interview who fulfilled the criteria. This method helped to explore the responses of the person that assisted in gathering of deeper information. Personal interview is a qualitative method helps to observe the behaviour of the interviewee and probes the answers of them (6). The personal interview was recorded and the information of the interviewee was kept confidential and anonymous. After the recording of the interview, the recording was analyzed. Further, the recorded interview was analysed based on HBM and each construct of the model was utilised to identify the relevant information that is gathered from the interviewee. This method was useful in showing high response rates as the questions were asked live related to the subject. The recording of the interview helped to analyse the behaviour of the interviewee that inclined him or her to pursue this health behaviour (7). The interviewee was a twenty-year old college girl pursuing her bachelors. She is 4 foot 6 inches and weighs 60 kg. According to body mass index (BMI) calculator, she is overweight with a BMI of 29.8 and the normal BMI is 24.9 (8). She is highly addicted to unhealthy diet like pizzas, burgers and high carbohydrate content foods. After the analysis of the interview recording, the key findings showed that she is highly engaged in poor dietary habits with low intake of vegetables, fruits and dairy products. She is also addicted to erratic eating like meal skipping that contributed to her overweight condition. In the college campus, there is high availability of calorie-dense foods and less nutritional foods that enticed her to consume unhealthy foods. As per the interview, it is also evident that there is an easy access to high-calorie beverages and she prefers to consume it instead of water. There is also less availability of nutrition based university guidelines on healthy diet and la ck of awareness prevails among the college students in the campus. The college food court also offers tempting discounts on the unhealthy food items and allures the university students to consume the junk food items. The interview also depicted that she is unaware of the ill effects of unhealthy eating and the associated disorders. The family history revealed that her father has a high blood pressure and evidence for heart disease. After the analysis of the recorded interview, a link can be established between the key findings of the health behaviour and HBM. The key findings show that she is unaware of the implications of the unhealthy diet on the health and well-being of an individual. She is also not aware of the development of any kind of illness that might occur due to prolonged consumption of junk food (9). This key finding gives an indication that there is lack of knowledge among the interviewee regarding the relationship between the sedentary lifestyle and increased risk for heart ailments like increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and some of the cancers. This is evident in her answer I dont know that I may develop any kind of illness. In the interview, quote I like pizza and burger as it is very delicious shows that she is also tempted to junk food in her daily life with lack of physical activity. Therefore, the perceived threat under the component of HBM can be applied to change and manage her health behaviour of unhealthy diet. The perceived threat is a combination of perceived severity and susceptibility that can be applied to a given condition where it is dependent on the knowledge about a condition. The HBM predicts that by engaging in health-promoting behaviours, there is lesser likelihood of engaging in particular health problem that reduce the risk for developing an illness or serious health problem. HBM predicts that if she perceives that she is susceptible to a particular health problem, she would engage in behaviours that would help to reduce the risk for the development of the health problem. Through education and by creating awareness, she would perceive the healthy behaviours that would reduce the risk for developing a serious illness (10). The behaviour under the HBM is the nutrition education intervention (NEI). This intervention can be applied among the colleg e students that would help to implement the healthy behaviours and in turn lessens the risk for developing serious health problems. NEIs comprises of lectures, web-based education and supplement provisions. This would help to deliver healthy diet and nutritional information to college students. This intervention would help in improving the dietary habits, body composition and quality of life. It also helps to create awareness among the college students about the ill effects of unhealthy eating and implications on the health (11). The web-based approaches would be helpful as the internet is an innovative approach to have an impressive impact in addressing the poor diet among the college students. Internet provides excellent opportunity to engage the college students through the interactive internet programs that provides nutrition information about the diet, nutrition and weight management. There should also be scope for individualized nutritional plan and feedback from the students that are designed specifically for them (12). It is also a good way to promote health among the college students in creating awareness through online videos, conducting physical exercise classes along with academics and information on nutrition content (13). This educational message can be delivered to the interviewee through one-to-one interactive session. It can also be delivered through telephone and online through web-based approach. The education message can be delivered effectively to the interviewee through a personal face-to-face interview. During this interview, she would be educated about the positive effects of healthy diet and create awareness among her about the implications of developing cardiovascular diseases due to prolonged obese condition in her (14). She would be given psychosocial support through motivation so that she gains confidence to adopt the healthy lifestyle and follow-up over the telephone would help to assess the effectiveness of the education message. Web-based interview can also be helpful as the college students are addicted to internet (15). References Fransen HP, Boer JM, Beulens JW, de Wit GA, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Hoekstra J, May AM, Peeters PH. 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