Health Promotion Assessment - Essay Example

Second would be perceived severity wherein the health practice that is campaigned and promoted are evaluated of the consequences and the threats that may be associated with it. The third dimension is the perceived benefits such that the usefulness and efficiency of the preventive actions in the health promotion is assessed. The barriers that might affect the health promotion are the fifth dimension. The assessment of difficulties and negative consequences of the preventive behaviour at the same time affects the compliance of the community regarding the preventive practice being introduced or implemented to them.

Finally, the fifth dimension is the cues to action that triggers the community or the participating group of the society and helps them to decide as to whether comply with the promoted health practice or not. However, health motivation is further added recently to the model. This includes the individual's readiness to be concerned about their health. The HBM provides a strong framework for health promotion programmes, stressing the need to identify a link between an individual's risk behaviour and disease in order to highlight the severity of the disease and to make it relatively easy to engage in behaviour likely to lead to a reduction in risk for that disease.

(Bunton & McDonald, 2002) The Social Learning Theory, however states that behaviour is the outcome of an interaction between cognitive processes and environmental events. One of its basic tenets is that behaviour is guided by expected consequences. Thus, having such principles, given that the community or the participating group have obtained good experiences from the promotion, the reinforcement is possible. This may further lead the group to be more engaged in the behaviour encouraged by the health campaign because of the perceived positive experience.

On the other hand, negative experiences, the less likely they are reinforced, their behaviours tend to minimize their participation or worse, not to adapt the practice at all. When individuals avoid such punishments by engaging in an alternative form of behaviour, it is termed negative reinforcement. These processes are important mediators of the uptake and maintenance of many health-related behaviours. (Bunton & McDonald, 2002)Health Belief Model The implementation of Health Belief Model (HBM) involving the now six dimensions that are considered significant in the reinforcement of a health campaign or promotion is generally deemed effective.

It has a flexible nature that can be applied to a wide range of health behaviours as well as it can address to a large group of population that is the target participant or group of a particular health campaign. Some of the areas that can be best applied with this theoretical model are those that concerns preventive health behaviours including health-promoting behaviours and heath-risk behaviours. Vaccination and the practice of using contraceptives are also included in the preventive health behaviours that can be covered by the HBM.

Another health behaviour wherein HBM can be used would be the sick role behaviours that refers to the target participants' compliance to the recommended medical regimens or