Nursing Human Behaviour and Health

Question: Describe about the Nursing for Human Behaviour and Health. Answer: Human behavior have a strong influence on their health and identification of this behavioral risk factors is important to determine the risk for developing other chronic diseases or analyze the trend of epidemiology data of particular area. My individual risk behavior that I feel I need to change is my lack of physical activity in my daily life. The essay reflects on my personal risk behavior and describes its influence on health. The potential impact of changes in health status will be explained by using socio-ecological perspective of health and determinants of health model. The essay carries further the discussion by analyzing the actions of Ottawa Charter that target these issues and proposes health promotion strategy in this area. This would be helpful modifying individual risk behavior and adopting health lifestyle. Due to my work responsibilities and my timing of work, I do not get adequate time to engage in any physical activity. I have to spend maximum part of my day in front of my computer for my official duties. I also consume lot of junk foods and do not restrict on oily foods. I think these two habits will pose great risk to my health in future and I want to modify this behavior to lead a healthy life. According to socio-ecological perspective of health, many factors combine to have impact on health of individual or community. A persons social and economic environment (such as their quality of living, housing, education and employment status), physical environment (level of hygiene, safe and clean water) and individual characteristics acts as determinants of health (Viner et al., 2012). In relation to my personal risk behavior of poor physical activity, it can be said that inactive lifestyle is a risk factor for many diseases like cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, pre-diabetes, depression and even some type of cancers. Insufficient physical activity is the leading cause of chronic disease and also contributes to the burden of non-communicable disease worldwide (Lee et al., 2012). Physically inactive people have 30% increased risk of death compared to physically active people. According to WHO report, percentage of physical activity among men and women was found to be more in high income countries compared to low-income countries. Thus, physical activity is inter-related with gross national product. The enabling factors leading to this habit mainly included sedentary behavior at home and office and increase in different modes of transportation (World Health Organization 2016). Urbanization is also a reinforcing factor influencing this behavior and many issues like high incidence of crime, fear of violence, lack of space for recreational activities and high level of pollution have discouraged people from physical activity (Donatiello et al., 2013). According to determinants of health, social factors and individual behaviors contributes to sedentary lifestyle in individuals. In my case, social factors of health have led to this risk behavior. Social determinants like chasing educational and job opportunities, individual attitudes, norms of society, exposure to current technology and more availability of transportation option also leads to inactive lifestyle individuals. Research study (Bherer et al., 2013) has showed that physical activity is essential both for older patients as well as patients with dementia, as it eliminates the negative impact of age on the body. Promoting physical activity in people is approach to prevent age-related disease and neurodegenerative disease. According to Social Cognitive Theory of behavioral change, the relation between people behavior and lack of physical activity can be interpreted. Sedentary life style may be influenced by interaction with behavior, environmental and personal factors. Environmental factors present certain situation to person when they have to forego health priorities and engage in activities that expose them to risk of diseases (Plotnikoff et al., 2013). Work responsibilities may not be the only factor leading to sedentary lifestyle. The motivation level of individual can also act as barrier which prohibits them from performing exercise and other physical activity. Factors like personal self-efficacy, self-motivation, coping skill and self-control interfere in the process of making lifestyle changes. For example a person ability to change behavior is disrupted due to environmental factors and personal factors such as lack of motivation to bring the change. Interventions like maintaining sufficient phy sical activity will be possible only when people raise their self-efficacy and realize the importance of a physically active life for good health. Certain form of social support and modifying societys norm may also be helpful in encouraging behavior change in people (Schwarzer, 2014). Figure 1: Social Cognitive Theory Model. Source: (Young et al., 2014). The Ottawa Charter agreement has proposed series of change to achieve good health for all. They proposed five areas of action in building in adequate public health policy address any health related issue, creating supportive environment for change, enhancing community action to make the change feasible, developing personal skills and most important reorienting health services to promote good health. The basic strategies to promote health promotion activities was to advocate to remove factors that affect health and enable health equity after collaboration with individual, health organization or government (Fry Zask, 2016). There are many health promotion activities which have targeted physically inactive people and taken action to increase physical activity in youths. Physical inactivity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and the World Health Federation has taken adequate steps to enable people to live better and longer lives. The recent promotional activities by World Healt h Federation took the initiative to promote physical activity. The idea of the programme was to incorporate physical activity in school lesson for children. In case of office going and other professional audience, the plan was to arrange activities within work setting so that youths engage in physical activities in daily living too (World-heart-federation.org, 2016). This could be done in the form of some competition and sports activity that generates the excitement and lead to participation of higher number of people in active programmes. Another example of such programme in Australia is the VicHealths investment plan for the year 2014 to 2018 to promote longer time of physical activity and walking among Australians. Their objective is to make physical activity a part of daily life routine. To achieve this goal, their plan is to invest in such programs and sport. They had planned various programs that will integrate active living in community. Their four strategic approach is to make flexible changes so that all members get to participate in sports, encourage workplace to reducing the sitting hours among employees, encouraging people to walk to school or office instead of public transport and develop partnership with organization to give connect more people to active recreational activities (Vichealth investment plan (2016). Transtheoretical Model is also helpful in evaluating the factors that lead to lack of physical activity in an individual. I can also use this model to bring positive change in my lifestyle. This theory proposed that change take place when people contemplate any issue, prepare to mitigate this issues, take actions to improve the situation and then maintaining those behavior to achieve complete efficacy in bringing about the change (Prochaska, 2013). An approach to bringing a feasible change can be possible if a person analyze the pros and cons of physical inactivity and compare them with the benefits of leading an active lifestyle. This will help them to take better decision to modify their behavior. In order to modify my lifestyle and reduce risk of chronic disease in future life, the plan is to first assess my current behavior. This can be analyzed by the use of Transtheoretical models of change. The first step to bringing a change is to be aware that how much impact physical inactivity can have on health. After assessing different research article on risk of physical activity, I found that it exposed a person to risk of many diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, risk of breast cancer, presence of psychological morbidities and many others. For example, a research study investigating the association between physical activity and cardiovascular disease showed that increasing the time of physical activity during leisure and moderate level of physical activity in work was beneficial in reducing the risk coronary heart disease and stroke among men and women (Li Siegrist, 2012). After the pre-contemplation and contemplation stage is over, I can move to preparation stage with much greater motivation when I am aware that physical inactivity will harm me in the future. I can do this by raising consciousness within me to engage in short break in office hours to reduce my sitting hours. I will also encourage family members to remind me of some period of daily physical activity. My aim will be to engage in at least one hour of physical activity in different forms like exercise, walking or sport activity. From the above reflection on my personal risk behaviors of physical inactivity in my life, the essay gives an idea of the implication of physical inactivity on health and how it increases risk of chronic disease in community. The essay gave discussion on the current trend that lead to inactive lifestyle in individual and what enabling factors in society contribute to this trend. Use of sociological perspective and behavior change theory helped in getting idea of variable that influences physical inactivity. Finally, example on health promotion program implemented according to action areas of Ottawa Charter and use of behavioral change theory framework helped in describing how I can modify my health risk behavior in the future. Reference Bherer, L., Erickson, K. I., Liu-Ambrose, T. (2013). A review of the effects of physical activity and exercise on cognitive and brain functions in older adults.Journal of aging research,2013. Donatiello, E., Russo, M. D., Formisano, A., Lauria, F., Nappo, A., Reineke, A., ... Siani, A. (2013). Physical activity, adiposity and urbanization level in children: results for the Italian cohort of the IDEFICS study.Public Health,127(8), 761-765. Fry, D., Zask, A. (2016). Applying the Ottawa Charter to inform health promotion programme design.Health promotion international, daw022. Lee, I. M., Shiroma, E. J., Lobelo, F., Puska, P., Blair, S. N., Katzmarzyk, P. T., Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group. (2012). 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