Methods of connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities: A realist scoping review

Deemed a global public health problem by the World Health Organization, physical inactivity is estimated to be responsible for one in six deaths in the United Kingdom (UK) and to cost the nation's economy £7.4 billion per year. A response to the problem receiving increasing attention is connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities. We aimed to explore what is known about the effectiveness of different methods of connecting primary care patients with community-based physical activity opportunities in the United Kingdom by answering three research questions: 1) What methods of connection from primary care to community-based physical activity opportunities have been evaluated?; 2) What processes of physical activity promotion incorporating such methods of connection are (or are not) effective or acceptable, for whom, to what extent and under what circumstances; 3) How and why are (or are not) those processes effective or acceptable? We conducted a realist scoping review in which we searched Cochrane, Medline, PsycNET, Google Advanced Search, National Health Service (NHS) Evidence and NHS Health Scotland from inception until August 2020. We identified that five methods of connection from primary care to community-based physical activity opportunities had been evaluated. These were embedded in 15 processes of physical activity promotion, involving patient identification and behaviour change strategy delivery, as well as connection. In the contexts in which they were implemented, four of those processes had strong positive findings, three had moderately positive findings and eight had negative findings. The underlying theories of change were highly supported for three processes, supported to an extent for four and refuted for eight processes. Comparisons of the processes and their theories of change revealed several indications helpful for future development of effective processes. Our review also highlighted the limited evidence base in the area and the resulting need for well-designed theory-based evaluations.     

Health promotion through the lens of population health: Toward a salutogenic setting

While strong currents within health promotion have attempted to move the field beyond a focus on individual behaviour towards one that examines the contribution of social environments on health, the tendency is often to fall back on individual behaviour modification as the primary lever for change. The Population Health research agenda bypasses behavioural determinants of health and explores instead the role of social determinants. This body of knowledge provides useful insight for addressing some of the tensions in the health promotion discourse. This paper explores two of these tensions: whether individuals at risk or general populations should be targeted for change; and whether lifestyle is an individual or a collective attribute. Merging the resolution of these tensions with Aaron Antonovsky's salutogenic model, this paper develops the concepts of collective lifestyles and salutogenic settings for future theoretical development in health promotion and public health.     

Clinician reflections on promotion of healthy behaviors in primary care practice

OBJECTIVE: Recommendations to use integrated models for health behavior change abound, however, the translation to practice has been poor. We used stimulated reflections of primary care physicians and nurse practitioners to generate insights about current practices and opportunities for changing how health behavior advice is addressed. METHOD: Twenty-one community practicing primary care clinicians invited to a nationally sponsored practice-based research network conference on promotion of healthy behaviors were asked to record aspects of health behaviors they addressed during a day of outpatient visits. In response to eight questions, clinicians reflected insights which were then analyzed by a multidisciplinary team to identify over-arching themes. RESULTS: Health behavior discussions are initiated and carried out predominantly by the clinician. These discussions occur primarily during health care maintenance visits or visits in which presenting complaints or chronic illnesses can be linked to health behaviors. Clinicians' reflections on viable opportunities for change include different modes of patient education materials such as web-based materials. Suprisingly infrequent were solutions outside of the clinical encounter or strategies that engage other staff or other community partners. CONCLUSION: Implementation of the integrated care model as an opportunity to enhance health promotion seems far from the current realities and future vision of even motivated network-based clinicians.     

Health promotion in primary medical care: problems and potential

Problems related to health promotion in primary medical care are reviewed within the framework of five characteristics of current medical practice: physician attitudes and beliefs, the economic structure of medical care, the structure of the medical-care encounter, the state of the art of health promotion, and physician knowledge and skills. The potential for integrating health promotion activities into the primary medical-care environment is based on the principles of pediatrics, general internal medicine, family practice, and obstetrics/gynecology. In the primary-care setting, both the roles and the expectations of physicians and patients are conductive to health promotion activities. Twelve practice principles for the primary physician are discussed, touching on such issues as style of communication, recognition of the "teachable moment," utilization of the longitudinality of the physician-patient relationship, coordination of care, and causes of failure. Issues for the future are reviewed, including the need for restructuring fee schedules, pursuing the knowledge base required for effective health promotion, and integrating training in health promotion methods and techniques in medical school curricula. The complex interactions during the next decade of three trends related to health promotion are discussed as determinants of the role of primary care as a substrate for health promotion.     

Clinician reflections on promotion of healthy behaviors in primary care practice

ObjectiveRecommendations to use integrated models for health behavior change abound, however, the translation to practice has been poor. We used stimulated reflections of primary care physicians and nurse practitioners to generate insights about current practices and opportunities for changing how health behavior advice is addressed.MethodTwenty-one community practicing primary care clinicians invited to a nationally sponsored practice-based research network conference on promotion of healthy behaviors were asked to record aspects of health behaviors they addressed during a day of outpatient visits. In response to eight questions, clinicians reflected insights which were then analyzed by a multidisciplinary team to identify over-arching themes.ResultsHealth behavior discussions are initiated and carried out predominantly by the clinician. These discussions occur primarily during health care maintenance visits or visits in which presenting complaints or chronic illnesses can be linked to health behaviors. Clinicians’ reflections on viable opportunities for change include different modes of patient education materials such as web-based materials. Suprisingly infrequent were solutions outside of the clinical encounter or strategies that engage other staff or other community partners.ConclusionImplementation of the integrated care model as an opportunity to enhance health promotion seems far from the current realities and future vision of even motivated network-based clinicians.     

Some problems in health promotion research

It is argued that health promotion research faces three criticalproblems: defining adequate research questions; identifyingappropriate areas for research and developing a theoreticalbasis for problem formulation. it is suggested that if healthpromotion research is to be a vigorous part of the emergingdiscipline of health promotion, rather than simply an evaluativetool, and if health promotion research is to be distinguishedfrom epidemiology, sociology, psychology, politics or economicswith a health promotion angle, then these three problems mustbe resolved The origins of the difficulties associated withproblem definition, priority areas for research and adequatetheoretical tools are traced in the first instance to the idealisticand programmatic nature of health promotion and the conflationof ‘is’ and ‘ought to be’ questionsin the idealism. The ‘ought to be’ nature of healthpromotion carries important implications for behavioural andsocial change. It is argued that for the most part the normativeand scientific issues surrounding change have not been disentangledand that neither have the contributions of the disciplines whichhave studied social and behavioural change had much impact onhealth promotion. These problems manifest themselves in studiesand practice involving empowerment, enablement and healthy publicpolicy. it is concluded that the role of research in healthpromotion must be clarified and a shift away from the pathogenicparadigm encouraged.     

Health promotion of the elderly: a conceptual matter

Although community health nurses have to face the increasing needs in curative and palliative care, they still engage in health promotion activities for the elderly, mainly cognitive and behavioural ones. The Quebec community health nurses who choose the McGill model of nursing, are able to integrate health promotion interventions in their daily practice with old aged people. In fact, this model helps these nurses consider the elderly, health, sickness and nursing care in a way that makes them promote self-esteem, empowerment, development and coping through most of their interventions. Moreover, the elderly population would benefit from an increased implication of nurses in ecological, environmental and community health promotion projects.     

Selective primary health care: the counter revolution

Primary health care in the WHO sense was triggered indirectly by the failure of the Malaria Eradication Programme. The response to this failure was an ideological change which considered that health services were not purely a way of delivering health care interventions to people but were something important to individuals and groups in their own right. Key changes of this idea called primary health care were linked to qualities such as power, ownership, equity and dignity. Such an ideological change involves the evolution of new forms to reflect the changes in content and some of these structures still require development. The advocates of highly selected and specific health interventions plus the managerial processes to implement them have ignored, or put on one side, the ideas which are at the core of what could be described as the primary health care revolution. They are in this sense counter revolutionaries.     

Planning community-oriented primary care in Israel

The concept of primary care in the Kupat Holim Health Insurance Institution encompasses all the stages of health: the promotion of health, personal preventive care, curative care, and rehabilitation in the community. Primary care is, thus, the foundation of this nationwide comprehensive health insurance and health care delivery system; Kupat Holim covers 3.2 million people, close to 80 percent of Israel's total population in 1983. Primary care clinics in the community are the main focus of care and have undergone changes in the types of health care providers and functions as population characteristics change. In this system, the planning process allows constant review of changing needs and demands and the introduction of new functions. The main approaches to planning primary care that are presented deal with team members and the division of work in the community clinic, manpower training at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and the content of primary care. Current trends include the extension of services provided to the patient in his home as well as the clinic and greater emphasis on preventive care. The interrelationship between policy and planning for primary care is strengthened by the linkage between financer, provider, and consumer in Kupat Holim. The planning process must make optimal use of this linkage to guide those responsible for health policy in implementing effective change.     

Maintaining population health in a period of welfare state decline: political economy as the missing dimension in health promotion theory and practice

There is increasing recognition in the health promotion and population health fields that the primary determinants of health lay outside the health care and behavioural risk arenas. Many of these factors involve public policy decisions made by governments that influence the distribution of income, degree of social security, and quality and availability of education, food, and housing, among others. These non-medical and non-lifestyle factors have come to be known as the social determinants of health. In many nations--and this is especially the case in North America--recent policy decisions are undermining these social determinants of health. A political economy analysis of the forces supporting as well as threatening the welfare state is offered as a means of both understanding these policy decisions and advancing the health promotion and population health agendas. The building blocks of social democracies--the political systems that seem most amenable to securing the social determinants of health--are identified as key to promoting health. Health promoters and population health researchers need to "get political" and recognize the importance of political and social action in support of health.     

Choice and accountability in health promotion: the role of health economics

Choices need to be made between competing uses of health careresources. There is debate about how these choices should bemade, who should make them and the criteria upon which theyshould be made. Evaluation of health care is an important partof this debate. It has been suggested that the contributionof health economics to the evaluation of health promotion islimited, both because the methods and principles underlyingeconomic evaluation are unsuited to health promotion, and becausethe political and cultural processes governing the health caresystem are more appropriate mechanisms for allocating healthcare resources than systematic economic analysis of the costsand benefits of different health care choices. This view misrepresentsand misunderstands the contribution of health economics to theevaluation of health promotion. It overstates the undoubtedmethodological difficulties of evaluating health promotion.It also argues, mistakenly, that economists see economic evaluationas a substitute for the political and cultural processes governinghealth care, rather than an input to them. This paper arguesfor an economics input on grounds of efficiency, accountabilityand ethics, and challenges the critics of the economic approachto judge alternative mechanisms for allocating resources bythe same criteria.     

Clinical and cost-effectiveness of computerised cognitive behavioural therapy for depression in primary care: Design of a randomised trial

Background  

Major depression is a common mental health problem in the general population, associated with a substantial impact on quality of life and societal costs. However, many depressed patients in primary care do not receive the care they need. Reason for this is that pharmacotherapy is only effective in severely depressed patients and psychological treatments in primary care are scarce and costly. A more feasible treatment in primary care might be computerised cognitive behavioural therapy. This can be a self-help computer program based on the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy. Although previous studies suggest that computerised cognitive behavioural therapy is effective, more research is necessary. Therefore, the objective of the current study is to evaluate the (cost-) effectiveness of online computerised cognitive behavioural therapy for depression in primary care.     

Behavioural Economics and Human Decision Making: Instances from the Health Care System

Over the last two decades behavioural economics has gained much momentum among scholars because of its innovative and controversial ways of explaining processes and mechanisms underpinning individuals’ judgements and decision making. Thanks to these features, behavioural economics has been applied to diversified domains, namely finance, public choice and marketing. Although the intrinsic characteristics of the health care sector, ranging from incomplete and asymmetrical information to high frequency of critical choices, make the sector a fertile ground for behavioural economics applications, research on the influences of behavioural economics on health care and clinical decision making are still rather fragmented. Therefore, through an interdisciplinary literature review integrating behavioural economics research with medical and behavioural decision-making studies, this article contributes to behavioural decision-making literature by providing a wide overview of how behavioural economics strategies may impact, and be implemented in, diverse health care circumstances. Examples of behavioural economics applications to health care circumstances include: organ donation and transplantation; habitual choices; individuals’ loss aversion and trust; present-biased preference; decision fatigue and excessive choice. Hence, this article aims to promote the effective behaviour of both consumers and providers in health care.     

Lay epidemiology and the prevention paradox: the implications of coronary candidacy for health education

This paper is concerned with the appropriateness of current attempts to prevent chronic disease through behavioural change. Based on extensive ethnographic research in South Wales, the paper suggests that, within contemporary British health culture, there exists a well developed lay epidemiology which has a significant bearing on the public plausibility of modern health promotion messages. The paper describes the notion of the coronary candidate (the ‘kind of person who gets heart trouble’) and discusses the operation of the idea in everyday life. The manner by which lay epidemiology and the population approach to health promotion construct the ‘prevention paradox’ within the social world is outlined. In conclusion it is suggested that lay epidemiology readily accommodates official messages concerning behavioural risks within the important cultural fields of luck, fate and destiny. This simultaneously constitutes a rational way of incorporating potentially troublesome information, and a potential barrier to the aims of health education.     

The role of general practice in promoting teenage health: a review of the literature.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS: Teenagers are acknowledged to be at high risk of health-damaging behaviours including smoking, teenage pregnancy, and drug and alcohol use. Additionally, the recognition of high levels of psychological distress is cause for serious concern about teenage health. This paper reviews health promotion interventions for teenagers in general practice. Medline, BIDS, Psyclit and SIGLE databases for January 1990-February 1997 were systematically searched for English language studies on adolescent/teenage health and health promotion interventions in primary health care/general practice; reference sections of articles were checked for earlier work. CONCLUSIONS: The literature indicates that teenagers rarely receive health promotion advice from their physicians. The impact on behaviour change, of screening and health promotion for teenagers in general practice requires further evaluation to asssess the potential effectiveness in preventing the onset or continuation of health-damaging behaviours.     

Effective community health participation strategies: a Cuban example

Since the decade of the 1970s health promotion has been an integral part of most primary health care strategies. This article examines some community participation strategies adopted in the health promotion in Cuba and the policies which enable such strategies. This is done in the context of health promotion theory and also examines the concept of direct involvement by the political directorate in health promotion. The article is written from a reflexive perspective following the author's visit to Cuba as member of a health study tour in March 2002.     

Bewertung der wirksamkeit betrieblicher gesundheitsförderung

Until now there is no comprehensive und standardized reporting system for worksite health promotion activities by the health insurance funds. Thus, it is still difficult to make a clear statement on the health-related effectiveness of such activities. In this article a study is presented, which tries to come closer to a sound judgement pragmatically. Documents from health promotion projects provided by four health insurance funds served as an empirical basis for the study. The information and data included in these documents were assessed by means of a point system. Ten of thirteen documents scored the minimum number of points, which had been defined as necessary to justify the assumption that the health promotion measures taken were effective with regard to back disorders. The study therefore indicates that worksite health promotion can contribute to the reduction of disorders and work disability if it complies with certain preconditions such as: systematic and cooperative planning and controlling, participation of employees, stepwise integration into the regular organizational structures and processes of the company, and combination of structural and behavioural prevention measures.     

Effect of competition-oriented reform in the Netherlands health care system on the relationship between primary care physicians, insurance groups and insured patients

The German health care policy debate is affected by proposals demanding the introduction of competitive elements. Analysis of the effects of regulated competition in the Netherlands health care system shows that actual behavioural changes of the key actors of the system differ considerably from expected changes, although incentives within the system have been substantially changed. Sickness funds are not selectively linked with providers and insured patients do not change their insurance company very often. From the point of view of the original reform targets, this preliminary result is quite disappointing. It can be explained by the fact that the relations between sickness funds, general practitioners and insured persons or patients are within a broader framework of health care. Thus, competition does not seem attractive to either of them. If regulated competition became more dominant, several undesirable effects on the so far well-appreciated primary care may be expected.