Discussion: The Use of Theory

Discussion: The Use of Theory

Importance of Theory in the practice of public health.

Public health, as well as health promotion programs, can aid in improving health, reducing disease risks, managing chronic illnesses as well as improving the well-being of people, families, and communities. Although not all health promotion initiatives and programs are equally successful. Most successful programs are established on a clear understanding of the aimed health behaviors as well as their environmental context. These programs are developed and managed by strategic planning theories and models, with close and continuous evaluation. A theory is a set of interconnected definitions, propositions, and concepts that give a systematic view of situations or events by stipulating relations among variables to explain as well as predict the situations or events.    Theories addressing health behavior can be of great importance in all these areas (Glanz Karen, 2015).

Health behavior theories can help during all levels of planning, implementing as well as evaluating an intervention. Program planners use theories as they seek to know WHY? WHAT? And HOW? This means theories can act as a guide to seek answers on WHY people accept or reject public health and medical advice or why they don’t care about their health.

Theories also guide you to know the knowledge you need prior to developing or coming up with an intervention program. Theories provide understanding into HOW to organize program strategies to reach individuals as well as organizations to make an impact on the. Theories aid in identifying WHAT should be monitored, measured, or/and compared while evaluating the program ( National Institutes of Health, 2018)..

Theories can enable us to understand the kind or nature of aimed health behaviors in the target group or population. They explain the changing aspects of behavior, the process required for behavior change, as well as the impacts of external influences on the behavior. Consequently, theories can help in identifying the most appropriate goals for programs, the methods for fulfilling change, as well as the outcomes for evaluation. Models and theories explain behavior as well as suggesting how to attain behavior change (Glanz Karen, 2015).

Then explain two ways you will incorporate theory into your public health campaign and why. 

I will incorporate theory in my public health campaign to measure the progress of decision and health behaviors in my target group that is the youths abusing drugs. I will mainly use the Trans-Theoretical Stages of Change theory because I expect my target population to change gradually, so this theory will help me to measure the outcomes in every level of progress. Planning, implementing and evaluating my campaign will be easy with this theory.

I will need theory to understand the nature of the targeted behavior and what I expect next; that is how behaviors are likely to follow each other. For instance, Trans-Theoretical Stages of Change theory states that behavioral change happens from Pre-contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation Action, maintenance, and termination. This theory will help me in knowing each level of behavioral change as well as the final behavior (Rural Health Information Hub, 2015).

By incorporating theory, I’m sure of a professional and a successful campaign.