A systems model of health behavior change

The modeling in this paper is at the level of the individual, in relation to the subsystem of health behavior. It integrates social, environmental, psychological, and physiological factors to describe the health behavior change process. It is not intended to be quantitatively predictive of behavior change, since further development of this model is needed to determine the mathematical form of the relationships between variables. The model is innovative in several ways. First, it includes health-related variables and a rich feedback structure. In contrast, attitude behavior change models often cannot explain health behavior adequately, because they do not incorporate physiological variables. Second, the model can be easily used by educators to help identify important variables for developing health education curricula. Consequently, program developers are helped in determining program intents, teaching strategies, and learning activities, and evaluative strategies which are congruent with the attitude behavior change process.