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Blog Post Challenge #2


For my second post I will be talking about health as well as mentioning a few theories promoting health. Health can be defined in many different ways, one being “the complete state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not just the absence of disease or infirmity.” The promotion of health is the use of discipline specific techniques to assist people in achieving their health related goals. Occupational therapy directed health promotion is the client centered use of occupations, adaptations to context, or alteration of context to maximize individuals’, families’, communities’, and groups’ pursuit of health and quality of life. Health promotion is a process of maximizing health through structured interventions. Before an appropriate theory can be selected for a health promotion initiative, a clear understanding of the health and occupation needs and desires of those being served is required. One of the first and most widely used models in health promotion is called the Health Belief Model (HBM). The basis of this model is the balancing of threats with barriers of taking the recommended action and the potential benefits. A key component to this model is self-efficacy. Another model is the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). The SCT is a model that is a good fit for occupational therapy health promotion program development and evaluation due to its emphasis on “how” to change behavior, the importance placed on self-efficacy, and mastery gained through doing. This type of approach promotes effective self-management of health habits that keep people healthy through their lifespan.

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