Jessica Carieato Discussion Paper #4 1, What are the pros and cons for organizing around topics vs. behaviors? hy While Iwas reading both of the chapters for this week's paper. one ofthe main things 1 \y noticed were the many pros” for organizing nutrition education around behaviors. Many times (2. ( 0 during my studies into nutfition education it has been emphasized to me that specific interventions | a” ¥ tend to be the most effective. This is a concept that I have seen reiterated in cl three ahd nue throughout this textbook as well, and I think it very strongly relates to the usefulness of using. behaviors as the focus of interventions. Behaviors are very clearly the more specific option between the two, and so one pro for the use of behaviors is that you can make them very specific, apex therefore effectively target and improve specific health issues. A major con for the use of fopics as your focus is that the point you are actually trying to get across Becomes diluted by excessive amounts of unnecessary information. This relates to a second pro for the use of behaviors, which is that by addressing behaviors, you can select and prioritize the issues of highest concer, a concept disc ein haplorSevén. You can target the most problematic health problems in a population {irst, and then go on to address how this issue relates to a more general health topic. Additionally, the use of behaviors as interventions implies that the educator has a greater understanding about the ,0¥ population they are educating. For example, take a population where obesity rates are very high. A 4" (8, topic-based intervention might highlight the health risks associated with obesity or the general v 1 Lee) causes of obesity, but some research into this population could reveal that this group of people Cif 7 eeonsume an exceptionally high amount of sugary drinks which is having a he effect on their weight status. In this ease, targeting the behavior of consuming fewer SSB each day would be more effective than just lumping that behavior in with the general topic of things that can lead to obesity. Chapter seven seems to indicate overall that when educating the public, a behavioral focus has been shown to be more effective. Depending on the variation in the population, you may need to broaden or generalize the behavior you are targeting, because there is no population where every person behaves exactly the same and has the exact same habits to correct. However, as explained on page 227, broadening the behavior you are targeting to something like, “reducing diabetes risk” is still behaviorally focused. 2. Why should you focus on only one behavior? ‘The logic behind only focusing on one behavior seems very straightforward: first, when you only have two sessions, you don’t want to spend too much of them overloading your group with information or you will run out of time to tell them how to use that information, Secondly, we know that promoting behavior change is a difficult task, and making a person feel as if they have to change everything about what they are currently doing will have a very detrimental effect on self- ~_sfficacy. Instead of having an intervention fail by trying to correct everything at once and overloading your audience, you should sacrifice some lower-priority habits in order to focus on effectively corocting the higher quality onc. This is especialy usin out situation, where we only have two sessions to instill profound motivation for behavior change. 3. In what ways can use of theory be helpful for assessing your audience? We have discussed heavily in previous weeks how theory is the best way to assess determinants of behavioral change. Therefore, it would be beneficial for us to use the theories we have learned as a framework for understanding what influences a desire to change in our population. Table 8-1 in this week’s readings is an example of how to take statements made by your audience and sort them into various determinants from theory. Theory is helpful for assessing your audience because it is always the most concise way of explain why people fall into certain behaviors and what needs to be done in order to facilitate change. so Vy? yt Ur y a