An interesting phenomena is emerging in health promotion industries worldwide. In an endeavour to get people to change their health behaviours organisations are developing behavioural change incentive schemes, for example, those achieving biochemically validated cessation at month post program will receive a ticket in a raffle for a holiday in Disneyland. Other intervention schemes such as international contests in developing countries and peer mentoring programs are depending on economic incentives to be effective, at least in the short run.
Evidence shows that Australia has used financial incentives to achieve behavioural change in the past such as baby bonus to increase fertility rate, reduced entitlements to government benefits if children are not immunised and funds to hospitals that increase donor donation rates – an indirect scheme that incentivises hospitals to increase organ donations which lead to the question, ‘Why not incentivise individuals directly?’
How well is direct or indirect incentivising being understood? In an attempt to reduce the increasing cost of chronic lifestyle disease democratic governments are doing their best to effectively influence the behaviour of its citizens. Of course this is nothing new, a variety of traditional policy tools such as regulations, taxes, provision of public services and information to modify behaviour in the public interest have been used. Obesity, for example, has become a complex social health issue where policy makers are focusing on behaviour of individuals rather than on the quality of secondary health care.
With the advent of technology studying and understanding how behaviour is influenced and what makes people change has rapidly increased, particularly through marketing research, behavioural economics and psychological profiling.
What this means is that these influences are extrinsic. For example, applying extrinsic actions to influence individuals, without explaining why, implies people are generally unaware of these direct influences, or perhaps they do not care. How individuals are being engaged takes many forms including being coached and encouraged to participate for the ‘common good’. There is evidence to suggest that such behavioural based interventions are more cost-effective than traditional service deliveries.
Many benefits accrue largely from this focus on cost and benefits analysis and behavioural economics as the driving force for health behavioural intervention change programs and little or not much focus on the quality and range of health care, healing and well being resources available.
At the individual level there are many behavioural change theories however for decades operant conditioning techniques were popular as the fundamental building blocks for change.
Health issues emerging globally are vexing, complex with competing agendas, differing country policies producing different impacts on key policy outcomes.
Many individuals are starting to question how their health is being impacted appearing to spiral out of control. Frequently searching for a quick fix leads them to a short term solution but there is an intrinsic sense that something different has to be done. There is more recognition of the health benefits of natural and holistic lifestyles beginning to emerge.
Lifestyle diseases have become the outcome of the way we lead our lives. In the 21st century when conventional medicine does not have answers to many health care needs, particularly lifestyle diseases, many people are starting to turn to traditional forms of ancient medicine that offer a more personalised and customised treatment option treating the whole person.
From the perspective of Ayurveda, a traditional Indian medicine 4,000 years old, focus is on knowledge of body and mind. According to Ayurvedic principles disease is a disruption of balance leading to disturbance in equilibrium in the body and mind. Rather than focus on symptoms Ayurvedic treatment is designed to find the root cause of ill health
The approach to healing with Ayurveda is based on customised strategies that include prevention of causative factors, purifying the body and mind, lifestyle interventions and rejuvenation therapies. Healthy Lifestyle improvement that aligns individual body constitutions is the simplest and most effective way of self-health care for health promotion, disease prevention and chronic lifestyle disease management with diet, behaviour, lifestyle, herbal medicine and seasonal change programs.
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