• Question: How do you help other people make healthier decisions?

    Asked by anon-229165 to Emily, Amber on 19 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Emily Mattacola

      Emily Mattacola answered on 19 Nov 2019:


      As health psychologists, we first need to understand how people make decisions about their health. We have lots of theories of health behaviour which we can use to do this, some of which are more complex than others. A nice simple one which is a good example is the COM-B model. The COM-B model says that our behaviours come from our capability, opportunity and motivation to complete the behaviour;
      Capability – we must have the psychological and physical ability to do the behaviour
      Opportunity – we must have a physical and social environment which makes the behaviour easy
      Motivation – we must actually want to do the behaviour, or it is a habit which we don’t think about

      This works for understanding why someone might complete a behaviour which we don’t want them to do, such as smoking, or can help us to understand why someone isn’t completing a behaviour which we do want them to, such as eating enough fruit and veg.

      Thinking about our fruit and veg example, we can use the COM-B model to try to work out what the barriers are to completing the behaviour;
      Capability – if the person doesn’t know how to cook, they’re more likely to rely on junk foods, which don’t have much in the way of veg!
      Opportunity – if they are from a poorer background, they might not be have the money to buy expensive fresh fruit and veg
      Motivation – eating junk foods might be a habit, so they don’t even consider eating anything else for dinner. They get home, and pop a pizza in the oven, so they don’t even think about any other options.

      Using this, we can then see what needs to change;
      Capability – we can sign the person up for cookery classes
      Opportunity – we can offer subsidised fresh fruit & veg, or educate them about how to access fruit & veg more cheaply, such as frozen
      Motivation – we can work with them to make sure they don’t have any pizza or other junk food in the house, but do have lots of fruit & veg ready for making a nice healthy dinner.

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