Reasons for Assessing Health Behaviors

Health Behavior
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Health Behavior
Health behavior refers to any activity or action taken to detect and prevent diseases in relations to promoting good health and welfare (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2008). For an individual to practice a health behavior, it is necessary to avoid smoking or the consumption of tobacco products, avoid excessive drinking, eat well, and exercise regularly. Health behaviors impact an individual’s quality of life, by delaying inception of chronic disease, thus extending an active lifespan. Assessing health behaviors of individuals in a given population help in planning and evaluation of programs. For program planning, evaluating the frequency of the behavioral risk factors can be used to set primaries or link the occurrence rates across populations. Additionally, the measure of health behaviors assists in assessing changes in health behaviors of different persons over a certain period of time (Mokdad & Remington, 2010). Precise estimates of health behaviors, assist in rewarding the communities for improved health outcomes. Such incentives are closely related to the implementation of policies and programs.
Smoking may cause a lasting negative outcome on an individual’s well-being. There is a high mortality rate among people who smoke due to coronary heart disease. Smoking may also result in cancers such as the esophagus, lung, and gastric as well as reduced lung capacity and bronchitis. Smoking cigarette may occur due to specific triggers, which lead to an increase in heart rate, change of moods or expectations, and craving for responses. Assessing the rate and pattern of smoking can be done in different format and methods. This includes self-report, self-monitoring diaries and biochemical measures. Self-report is a common method used to measure the rate of smoking. This method requires smokers to reflect on their smoking habits. Distinctive questions such as “how many cigarettes do you smoke per week?” are used to evaluate the number of cigarettes smoked each day or within a period of one week (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). For this operation to be successful, an interviewer keeps a detailed record of smoking rate and other variables after an interview session. Through this procedure, it is easy to demonstrate th...