Analyzing Behavioral Risk Factors: Course Project

Course Project—Analyzing Behavioral Risk Factors: This week you will add to the work you have done in Weeks 1 and 2 on your final project. You will combine…

Course Project—Analyzing Behavioral Risk Factors

Paper details

This week you will add to the work you have done in Weeks 1 and 2 on your final project. You will combine the work from the previous weeks with this part and submit it for grading.

Phase 3 of the PRECEDE-PROCEED model is the education and ecological assessment. After the key risk factors have been identified, they are classified into three categories: Predisposing, reinforcing, and enabling factors. Approaches to these factors may vary depending on the setting, so it is important to take both the factors and the setting into account in the program planning process.

In Week 1, you selected and analyzed a health issue, explaining the populations or groups most affected by it. In Week 2, you examined the behavioral and environmental risk factors related to your selected health issue. This week, based on your analysis in Week 2, select one or two behavioral risk factors as the focus for the final project.

Week 3 Tasks:

Using the readings for the week, the South University Online Library, and the Internet, research risk factors. Write a 4–6-page educational assessment paper.

Complete the following:

• Identify one or two behavioral risk factors related to your selected health issue. Justify your choices using scholarly references.
• Identify the predisposing, reinforcing, and enabling factors for each selected behavioral risk factor.

• Describe at least two examples of each factor as they relate to the behavior.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of two different settings that can be used to address the health behavior in the targeted population.

Support your statements with scholarly references and appropriate examples.

Collate your work on Phase 1 (Week 1) and Phase 2 (Week 2) together with Phase 3 and submit the paper.

Poor Medication Compliance
Poor medication compliance, commonly referred to as non-compliance, is a term used to describe the act of refusal or failure to comply with medication. It is used to infer patients who do not take their prescribed medications or strictly follow prescribed medication regimens. Such individuals are usually referred to as non-compliant. Medication compliance is of great significance, majorly controlling a patient’s chronic condition, treating different temporary conditions, or their overall long-term wellbeing and health. Poor medication compliance has been associated with various disease complications such as avoidable exacerbations, frequent admissions to hospitals, and increased medication costs for such patients and their families. When a patient has a personal connection with his/her healthcare giver or their pharmacist, it would be the most crucial segment in their medication adherence. Poor medication compliance health risk is associated with specific behavioral risk factors such as alcohol or tobacco intake and psychosocial factors such as attitude, motivation, and beliefs.
Alcohol or Tobacco Intake
Alcohol and tobacco intake has been termed as the most widespread causes of poor medical non-compliance worldwide. The use of tobacco is associated with substantial medical effects. Higher healthcare costs resulting from medical conditions related to smoking include lung cancer, lung disease, premature births, reduced wound healing, and heart diseases, among others. Also, alcohol use may lead to chronic disease development and various serious problems such as heart diseases, stroke, liver disease, and high blood pressure. Since not all health care diseases and costs may be associated with alcohol or tobacco use, research has shown that health care use patterns for the alcohol and tobacco users may be different, particularly in terms of medical compliance issues (Sansone & Sansone, 2018). Tobacco and alcohol misuse is the primary behavioral risk factor associated with lower medical compliance among patients.
Predisposing tobacco and alcohol intake factors include the individuals’ socioeconomic status, beliefs, rationale, negligence, and attitudes. For instance, tobacco and alcohol users may be under the influence when he/she is given directions and prescriptions for using their medications. They may fail to understand the instructions and be non-compliant with their medications. Some alcohol and tobacco users may also neglect to take their medications as instructed and only take them when in pain or when reminded. Such patients also have poor relations with their physicians hence have a negative attitude towards medication (Sansone & Sansone, 2018). Moreover, such patients may believe that either alcohol or tobacco is the cause of their ill health; hence, medication may temporarily help them, therefore no need to take medicine as instructed.
Enabling factors of tobacco and alcohol users in being non-compliant may include their income, accessibility, and health skills, which may contribute to such risk behaviors. High income allows the users to acquire either alcohol or tobacco, enabling them to continue using the substances. Moreover, when alcohol and tobacco substances are easily accessible to the users, it allows them to continue using the substances (Sansone & Sansone, 2018). Reinforcing factors for the tobacco and alcohol users may include rewards and incentives, which increase the probability of such behaviors recurring. They may consist of peer support, especially among teenagers, and the stimulant effect of such substances.
Psychosocial Behaviors
When individuals are under medications, especially for those with chronic diseases, they challenge integrating the complex, demanding, and life-long regimen in their lives to help control the progressive illnesses and delay or prevent the disease’s complications. They are exposed to psychosocial factors such as cognitive constructs, including some beliefs and knowledge about the disease, coping and behavioral skills, wellbeing, and emotional distress. It would have a direct effect on their medical compliance (Eisen et al., 2015). According to Stobbe (2018), such individuals could be exposed to emotional distress, which may cause them to lose hope in medication or some absurd knowledge concerning the treatment of the diseases they may be suffering from, resulting in medical non-compliance.
Predisposing factors of psychosocial behaviors may include motivation. The patient may be motivated by the fact that another form of medicine seems more curative than the lifetime form of treatment. The patient may also be predisposed to some rationale that makes him/her believe in an absurd idea (Stobbe et al., 2018). Moreover, patients may be continually exposed to neglect from close family or friends, which would repeatedly cause them emotional distress. Such factors would cause the patient to develop such psychosocial behaviors.

Some of the enabling factors causing a patient to develop may include the patient’s health care environment. For instance, when the healthcare provider fails to provide the patient with the right knowledge about the medical condition’s treatment process (Stobbe et al., 2018). The patient may look for other sources and may end up misguided. It would result in such psychosocial behaviors hence poor medical compliance. Some reinforcing factors to psychosocial behaviors may include positive reinforcement when a patient opts for another non-medical treatment. For example, if the patient starts to feel better after he/she stops taking the medication, he/she would continually believe in the other option.

Health Behavior in a Targeted Population
The study aimed at investigating Georgia and the St. Joseph’s/Candler settings to address a health behavior concerning the community health needs assessment. Incorporating two different locations in such studies may have some advantages and some disadvantages. Some of the benefits include the two settings provided a broad scope of the study, which would help evaluate some of the study’s adverse effects, which were unrecognized in previous studies. It will also offer a broader general view concerning some potential problems such studies. On the other hand, having a broader scope of the study had some demerits, including the danger of getting swamped by huge amounts of heterogeneous data and inappropriate pooling. Moreover, the study could have led to a broad and non-specific data evaluation, resulting in incorrect and biased results. 

References
Eisen, S. A., Miller, D. K., Woodward, R. S., Spitznagel, E., & Przybeck, T. R. (2015). The effect of prescribed daily dose frequency on patient medication compliance. Archives of internal medicine, 150(9), 1881-1884. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi6kr_ul9r6AhVtMOwKHb3JB5EQFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fscholars.unh.edu%2Fhmp_facpub%2F47%2F&usg=AOvVaw2n9VIwjs_DwUIImbG_zLmB
Morris, L. S., & Schulz, R. M. (2017). Patient compliance—an overview. Journal of clinical pharmacy and therapeutics, 17(5), 283-295.
Mzoughi, K., Zairi, I., Jemai, A., Kilani, B., & Kraiem, S. (2018). Factors associated with poor medication compliance in hypertensive patients. La Tunisie Médicale, 96(6), 385-390.
Sansone, R. A., & Sansone, L. A. (2018). Alcohol/Substance misuse and treatment nonadherence: a fatal attraction. Psychiatry (Edgmont), 5(9), 43.
Stobbe, J., Wierdsma, A. I., Kok, R. M., Kroon, H., Depla, M., Roosenschoon, B. J., & Mulder, C. L. (2018). Lack of motivation for treatment is associated with greater care needs and psychosocial problems. Aging & mental health, 17(8), 1052-1058.