Sociocultural Factors Essay

Discuss: To which extend influence sociocultural factors health behaviours.

Specific health behaviours have been identified to be positively associated with heath such as eating a healthy diet and maintaining a healthy body weight, exercising regularly, and some have been identified to be health risk behaviours e.g. smoking and drinking excessively (Housman and Dorman, 2005).
Health behaviour models examine why people participate in health behaviours. Odgen (2004) separates health behaviour models into two groups: 1. Social cognition models, which describe social behaviour in more general terms and normally as an outcome of subjective norms and attitudes to the specific behaviour. 2. Cognition models, which are specific health models,

Is is to add that these variations can often be a result of ethnic and/or social-economical status of the people living within. The lower social classes in industrialised nations are defined by relative poverty and homelessness. Not coincidentally, individuals from those classed suffer from poorer health and participate in fewer health behaviours, than those of higher social classes. People exercise more and eat healthier food in neighbourhoods where there are save parks, and supermarkets with a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. These characteristics are normally found in wealthier residential areas (Diez-Roux & Mair,

Many health behaviours are supported by religions or state laws in positive and negative ways. But also ethnic and social-economical status can lead to health inequalities. Low educational attainment and low availability of healthy food choices reducing the perceived threat of disease and discourage from positive health behaviours. However, individual 's personal differences must not be overseen. Biological and psychological differences interplay with sociocultural factors and create human health behaviours. The study of health psychology can help to make those connections and play a key role in creating health promoting programmes that equally educate people about benefits of adoption specific health behaviours and raise awareness of susceptibility. Hopefully, this will lead to a reduction of negative attitudes and barriers towards positive health behaviours, that more people, from every sociocultural background adapt positive health behaviours in the