The Health Patterns and Health Promotion Activities
Abstract
Background: Multiple health behavioral risk factors linked to noncommunicable disease are assumed to be modifiable to form a healthier lifestyle. This healthy lifestyle is characterized by high levels of physical activity, healthy diet, and proactive health focus. Emergent patterns of multiple health behaviors in populations, behaving as attractors within complex adaptive systems, show only one health pattern out of several as conforming to such a healthy lifestyle. Objective: Determine if patterns of multiple health behaviors underlie levels of engagement in health promoting activities with special focus on high intensity exercise and sports, healthy diet, and health proactive orientation. Method: An historical cross sectional data set of 2,007 adult interviews was used to examine reported use of thirteen different health promoting activities and self-reported health status. The Health Patterns Report modeled attractor effects on multiple health behaviors including one emulating a healthy lifestyle. Multivariate methods were used to evaluate the construct validity of the thirteen health promoting activities, examine their effects on self-reported health status, examine the health pattern effects on self-reported health status, and engagement in health promoting activities analyzed via logistic regression. Correlations between health pattern attractors and health promotion activities were visualized with nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Results: Construct validity of health promoting activity measures identified five factors explaining 48.3% of variance. Health promoting activities had significant effects on health status. Only high intensity exercise and healthy diet were associated with positive effects; prescription medications were linked to negative effects. An adult's health patten had significant effects on health status. However, only the high physical activity health pattern had positive health status effects. An adult’s health pattern had significant effects on the number of health promoting activities engaged in, and specific activities engaged in. Only one health pattern had significant odds of engaging in high intensity exercise and sports. Conclusions: Engagement in various health promoting activities were significantly influenced by an adult’s health pattern. Treated as attractors, the health patterns confirmed attractor effects on type of health promoting activities engaged in and health status. Implications for the modifiability of behavioral risk factors, multiple health behavior change, and government efforts to increase physical activity are discussed.
Background: Multiple health behavioral risk factors linked to noncommunicable disease are assumed to be modifiable to form a healthier lifestyle. This healthy lifestyle is characterized by high levels of physical activity, healthy diet, and proactive health focus. Emergent patterns of multiple health behaviors in populations, behaving as attractors within complex adaptive systems, show only one health pattern out of several as conforming to such a healthy lifestyle. Objective: Determine if patterns of multiple health behaviors underlie levels of engagement in health promoting activities with special focus on high intensity exercise and sports, healthy diet, and health proactive orientation. Method: An historical cross sectional data set of 2,007 adult interviews was used to examine reported use of thirteen different health promoting activities and self-reported health status. The Health Patterns Report modeled attractor effects on multiple health behaviors including one emulating a healthy lifestyle. Multivariate methods were used to evaluate the construct validity of the thirteen health promoting activities, examine their effects on self-reported health status, examine the health pattern effects on self-reported health status, and engagement in health promoting activities analyzed via logistic regression. Correlations between health pattern attractors and health promotion activities were visualized with nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Results: Construct validity of health promoting activity measures identified five factors explaining 48.3% of variance. Health promoting activities had significant effects on health status. Only high intensity exercise and healthy diet were associated with positive effects; prescription medications were linked to negative effects. An adult's health patten had significant effects on health status. However, only the high physical activity health pattern had positive health status effects. An adult’s health pattern had significant effects on the number of health promoting activities engaged in, and specific activities engaged in. Only one health pattern had significant odds of engaging in high intensity exercise and sports. Conclusions: Engagement in various health promoting activities were significantly influenced by an adult’s health pattern. Treated as attractors, the health patterns confirmed attractor effects on type of health promoting activities engaged in and health status. Implications for the modifiability of behavioral risk factors, multiple health behavior change, and government efforts to increase physical activity are discussed.