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A HEALTHY nation needs welltrained GPs and good hospitals delivering high-quality treatments. But prevention is better than cure, and these days preventive health behaviour is a government mantra. Behaviours which make illness less likely must be promoted, and the impact of illness on health and everyday functioning minimised (Wanless, 2002). A discussion paper published recently by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit (Halpern et al., 2004; see weblinks) highlighted personal responsibility and the need for public health behaviour change, noting:
...achievement of major policy outcomes requires greater engagement and participation from citizens governments can't do it alone.
...improvements depend on changes in personal behaviour: for example in health, on better diet and more exercise (p.3)
and concluding:
...behaviourally-based interventions can be significantly more cost-effective than traditional service delivery. There is good evidence across a range of policy areas -for example in health of the cost-effectiveness of behavioural interventions (for example, a change in diet that avoids a heart attack is better and cheaper than dealing with the consequences of poor diet with heart surgery). (p.3)
The Department of Health White Paper Choosing Health, published in the same year (see weblinks), confirmed the central role of the application of health psychology expertise in effecting such change.
Health psychology research locates determinants of health behaviour within a multi-layered biopsychosocial...