The bases of targeting behavior in health promotion and disease prevention

Health behaviors shape more than 30% of one's physical and mental health, as well as overall well-being. Yet, changing behavior is difficult. This paper aims first at operationalizing the concept of health behavior by focusing on its main components and determinants. Second, it gives insights into how to influence health behavior by providing an overview of some of the most commonly used approaches to the design of behavioral interventions.

This is a position paper that presents a selection of evidence-based theories, models and approaches to understand and address behavior.

A health behavior broadly refers to every individual action affecting health, disease, disability, or mortality. Behavior is shaped by factors within the skin (biological, psychological) and outside the skin (interpersonal, environmental, policy). Behavior change has therefore to be addressed from an ecological perspective. Specifically, behavior change can be influenced by changing capability, opportunity and motivation. Depending on the specific determinants of the behavior at stake, there are numerous approaches that can be taken. The main steps to design interventions are: defining the problem, selecting and analyzing the target audience, setting objectives, designing the intervention, planning and implementing an evaluation.

Behaviors should not be targeted in isolation but within a socio-ecological approach that accounts for both their individual and environmental determinants.

This paper provides practitioners with the bases of behavior change. It offers a road-map of the main factors to consider and shows how to address behavior by planning an intervention in all its main steps.