The Patterns of Adapting to Health (PATH) blend a developmental stage-based view of adult adaptive health behavior with a complex adaptive systems model of individual and population health behavior.
Stages of Adaptive Health Behavior
Based on analysis of tens of thousands of adult interviews, for a large majority of adults adaptive health behavior moves through three developmental stages: Pre-Adaptive, Adaptive Patterns, and Post-Adaptive, driven heavily by an adult's locus of health decision-making control for themselves and their family:
Stages of Adaptive Health Behavior
Based on analysis of tens of thousands of adult interviews, for a large majority of adults adaptive health behavior moves through three developmental stages: Pre-Adaptive, Adaptive Patterns, and Post-Adaptive, driven heavily by an adult's locus of health decision-making control for themselves and their family:
Pre- and Post-Adaptive Stages
In the Pre-Adaptive Stage adults have minimal involvement in health decisions. Parents or guardians continue to make health decisions for these adults after aged 18 and into their early and perhaps late twenties.
In this stage young adult's response to health is characterized by "adaptive ambivalence:" These adults fail to express adaptive preferences and experiences low levels of adaptive coping stress.
In the Post-Adaptive Stage adults have minimal involvement in health decision-making due to frailty or cognitive decline. Adults enter this stage sometime after age 65. In this stage adult children or other care takers assume the role of health decision-maker.
Similar to the Pre-Adaptive Stage, elderly adults in the Post-Adaptive Stage are characterized by "adaptive ambivalence."
Adaptive Patterns Stage
This is the most complex stage.
As adults age and take on more and more control over health decisions, adaptive coping stress grows. This stress arises from efforts to optimize a myriad of personal preferences, habits, and perceived capabilities (self-efficacy) in situations requiring immediate or upcoming health-related decisions. Health decisions may be made through conscious deliberation or nonconscious processes. Continued exposure to similar health-related situations leads to habitual semi-automatic patterns of response. Coping stress increases self-regulatory efforts to optimize energy expenditures and maintain homeostasis.
These dynamics draw individuals into conformity with one of the PATH attractors. These attractors "control" the interaction of population adaptive behavior in response to heath-related social determinants.
In the Pre-Adaptive Stage adults have minimal involvement in health decisions. Parents or guardians continue to make health decisions for these adults after aged 18 and into their early and perhaps late twenties.
In this stage young adult's response to health is characterized by "adaptive ambivalence:" These adults fail to express adaptive preferences and experiences low levels of adaptive coping stress.
In the Post-Adaptive Stage adults have minimal involvement in health decision-making due to frailty or cognitive decline. Adults enter this stage sometime after age 65. In this stage adult children or other care takers assume the role of health decision-maker.
Similar to the Pre-Adaptive Stage, elderly adults in the Post-Adaptive Stage are characterized by "adaptive ambivalence."
Adaptive Patterns Stage
This is the most complex stage.
As adults age and take on more and more control over health decisions, adaptive coping stress grows. This stress arises from efforts to optimize a myriad of personal preferences, habits, and perceived capabilities (self-efficacy) in situations requiring immediate or upcoming health-related decisions. Health decisions may be made through conscious deliberation or nonconscious processes. Continued exposure to similar health-related situations leads to habitual semi-automatic patterns of response. Coping stress increases self-regulatory efforts to optimize energy expenditures and maintain homeostasis.
These dynamics draw individuals into conformity with one of the PATH attractors. These attractors "control" the interaction of population adaptive behavior in response to heath-related social determinants.
New opportunities
The Patterns of Adapting to Health (PATH) reveal new opportunities for:
- Understanding individual resistance to multiple health behavior change (MHBC)
- Understanding the interaction of population health behavior and social determinants
- improving return on health care consumer marketing and advertising targeting decision-makers
- improving return on quantitative and qualitative consumer marketing research
- improving community health by directly targeting behavioral patterns impacting health and medical expenditures flowing from or into your organization.