Behaviors Influence Health

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines how behaviors are powerfully shaped by a range of social factors as well as how behaviors influence health. Traditional approaches to improving health-related behaviors have focused on informing people about the importance of healthy behaviors and urging them to engage in those behaviors. A large body of knowledge, however, indicates that a person’s living and working conditions—and the factors such as income, wealth, education, work, and racism that shape those conditions—also play a fundamental role in shaping health-related behaviors. Urging people to make healthy choices will not produce the desired behavioral effects if healthy choices are not accessible to them. Strategies to improve health-related behaviors must address the obstacles that people, particularly those with limited economic resources, face to adopting and maintaining healthy behaviors. Many of those obstacles can only be addressed by society, not by individuals.