NYU Ecological Model Research Paper

Ecological models of health behavior emphasize the environmental and policy contexts of behavior, while incorporating social and psychological influences. Ecological models lead to the explicit consideration of multiple levels of influence, thereby guiding the development of more comprehensive interventions. Ecological models aim to guide comprehensive population wide approaches to changing behaviors that will reduce serious and prevalent health problems. The combination of environmental, policy, social, and individual intervention strategies is credited with the major reductions in tobacco use in the United States since the 1960s as outline by the Institute of Medicine, and this experience has stimulated the application of multi-level models and interventions to many health problems.

The core concept of an ecological model is that behavior has multiple levels of influences, often including intrapersonal (biological, psychological), interpersonal (social, cultural), organizational, community, physical environmental, and policy. Ecological models are believed to provide comprehensive frameworks for understanding the multiple and interacting determinants of health behaviors. More importantly, ecological models can be used to develop comprehensive intervention approaches that systematically target mechanisms of change at each level of influence.

Evaluating both individual and environmental influences on health requires explicit measurement not only of individual attributes and risk factors, but also ecological variables.

The Ecological model has been criticized for its lack of specificity about the most important theorized environmental related influences and lack of information about how environmental and its related influence operates or interact across levels

Example of an ecological model being used is worksite interventions providing ready access to social networks and organizational structures. where interventions aimed to increase coworker social support for behavior change through activities such as group walking clubs and team competitions. Another model that can be used for this health behavior intervention is the health belief model due to its focus on motivation and self efficacy.

References

Sallis, J. Owen. N. and Fisher, B. (2015). Health Behavior and Health Education. https://www.med.upenn.edu/hbhe4/part5-ch20-measuri…

Glanz, K., Rimer, B. K., & Viswanath, K. (2015). Health behavior: Theory, research, and practice (5th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Respond to the bold paragraph ABOVE by using one of the option below… in APA format with At least two references and a minimum of 200 words….. .(The List of References should not be older than 2016 and should not be included in the word count.) 

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