How Behavior Change Content Can Guide Health Consumers towards Preventive Health Outcomes?
Behavior change is crucial for disease prevention
Many diseases that cause critical illness and premature death — including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, AIDS, and some cancers — could be prevented with timely behavior changes to reduce the risk of developing the disease. However, just making people aware does not lead them to change their subsequent actions.
There is an evident disconnect between what people know they should do, and what they actually do.
For example — some people usually understand the importance of healthy behaviors (regular exercise, balanced diet, adequate sleep), and risks of unhealthy behaviors (smoking, poor diet, and sedentary lifestyle), but they find it hard to resist unhealthy routines. This is why ‘behavior change communication’ is essential. It helps guide people towards making positive changes in their lifestyle that impact their health for good.
What is behavior change communication?
Behavior change communication is a strategic communication approach that aims to bridge the inadvertent gap between the knowledge that people possess and its behavioral output. It involves interactions and persuasion to alter people’s attitudes. It also influences social norms and beliefs to eventually effect the change of behavior.
Behavior change is beginning to be effective in different areas — health and well-being; prevention of environmental pollution to combat climate change; and improving cyber security. For example, in Chile in South America, a behavioral intervention was designed by environmental authorities to bring down emissions from wood stoves used in households, which involved providing real-time feedback. This induced a behavioral change in wood stove users, causing a 17% reduction in residential emissions that cause air pollution.
There are certain principles and theories of behavior change that have been formed by studying psychological, societal, and emotional influences on people’s behavior and habits. These principles and theories provide the basis and guidance to develop behavior change interventions. These interventions can be then implemented using different communication strategies and techniques.
How content can influence health consumer behavior
Behavior change content comprises information that is imparted to the intended target population through different means. It influences behavior at the individual level to impact a change at a population level in three different ways:
1. It motivates and convinces health consumers: Behavior change communication bolsters motivation and reduces resistance to initiate behavior change. This is done by making people aware of what constitutes unhealthy behavior and providing them legitimate concerns to change for the better. Motivation can be positive (anticipation of a healthy body, longer life, increased productivity at work) and negative (fear of repercussions like disease, weakness, pain). People can be driven towards specific goals when they have clear motives in mind. Behavior change content can also reduce stigma and discrimination through strategies like health education and motivational interviewing.
For example: The onset of COVID-19 pandemic had necessitated the world-wide adoption of COVID-appropriate behaviors like the usage of face masks, hand-sanitizing, and social distancing. Social media and mass media were extensively used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to educate people about how this virus transmits from one person to another and what are the personal health implications for the individual if one gets infected. This clearly communicated the need for changing behavior and motivated people to follow all safety protocols. This individual motivation was intended to help prevent the spread of disease to a larger population as well.
2. It reduces barriers to healthy behaviors: People tend to lose motivation when there is absence of feedback and lack of immediately tangible results and social support. Behavior change content can remarkably reduce such barriers by the use of nudge strategy, which gives subtle stimuli to people so that they make favorable decisions for themselves. This strategy influences the subconscious minds of individuals so that the healthy actions and decisions become impulsive and automatic instead of deliberate, rational, and effortful. This strategy is implemented in two ways: (1) by setting incentives such that people naturally decide healthy action, and (2) by establishing social norms so that people have external validation to support healthy behaviors.
For example: Informing the public about how many people have been vaccinated in a population creates social norms that can influence individuals to get vaccinated themselves too. Likewise, offering incentives like cash, discounts on goods and services, and free vouchers can push people towards behavior change to prevent diseases. A study showed that use of incentive-based interventions can increase HIV testing rates in low- and middle-income countries.
3. It impacts health in the long run: Periodic prompts and cues can be instrumental for individuals to maintain healthy habits and prevent relapse of unhealthy behaviors. Periodic reminders through in-app notifications, messages, and brief feedback can be communicated multiple times (daily, weekly, monthly) to give positive reinforcement. This encourages users to keep making progress in their health journey and maintain efforts to change behavior.
For example: A study was conducted to assess the effects of mobile phone messaging as an intervention for preventive healthcare. It showed that mobile phone messaging improved people’s adherence to vitamin supplements, and it also increased their likelihood of quitting smoking. Similarly, another study proved that people who received personalized SMS and health tips were able to lose more weight with lifestyle changes than people who only used printed materials about weight control.
How is behavior change content disseminated?
The behavior change content is more influential when it is engaging, interactive, entertaining, and relatable. Visual representation of information readily captures the attention of users through infographics (creative graphics with how-to guides, listicles, myths & facts), posters (messages with illustrations), and videos (of stories encouraging appropriate behaviors and direct messages by health authorities).
There are various mediums of communication to disseminate behavior change content to the public. The last decade has seen a surge in usage of digital health intervention tools like mobile apps, interactive health websites, and social media in addition to traditional health communication channels.
These tools are cost-effective, have wider reach, and are also proving to be the most impactful channels of communication. They cater to people with short attention spans in a fast-paced and tech-driven world. Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are widely used by the WHO and many other healthcare organizations to disseminate credible behavior change content with important updates regarding vaccines and other prevention strategies.
Mobile apps deliver content in different formats like blogs, videos, games, etc. and also enable remote monitoring to provide personalized recommendations.
Personalized behavior change content is tailored to the unique needs of individuals by taking into account their personal data like lifestyle, dietary habits, likes-dislikes, work routine etc. and provides customized recommendations. Personalization of content ensures that people are easily drawn to self-regulatory behavior (by goals-setting and self-monitoring) as it walks them through their health journey, so that they don’t feel alone at any point in time.
Conclusion
Behavior change communication guides health consumers towards preventive health outcomes by providing them motivation, reducing environmental barriers for them to adopt healthy behaviors, and enabling long-term maintenance of healthy behaviors. This can be made possible by using different strategies and mediums of communication to target health consumers.
Saathealth uses AI-powered digital tools to deliver content that influences behavior change. Mobile apps use incentives, behavioral nudges, storytelling, and infotainment, all while leveraging AI to personalize content for users.
We have been working to deliver behavior change content across different therapeutic areas like nutrition, children’s health, respiratory diseases, and non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease etc.
We make impactful content in different formats like animated videos, reels, infographics, quizzes, and games. In the past, our work has reached adolescents, parents; and also multicultural, low-income, and LGBTQ communities. We continue to expand our scope of work to target more people and communities, with our unique strategies to drive better health outcomes.
Anjali Dhingra is a Scientific Content Writer at Saathealth, an AI powered digital health platform which delivers behavior change content to health consumers with personalized digital tools.
