title: Health psychological theory in promoting population health in Päijät-Häme, Finland: first steps toward a type 2 diabetes prevention study.
abstract: In public health promotion, behavioural science theories and theory-based methods should be translated into practical strategies that fit environmental conditions and are feasible for implementation. In this article, an effort to meet this challenge is presented. As a starting point we describe the conditions for development and success of the previous generation of public health promotion programmes in Finland. However, changes both in the population structure and in the population health bring new demands for programme development. We consider possibilities offered by health psychology and give a practical example of how theories and theory-based methods are applied in a community programme for type 2 diabetes prevention implemented in the Finnish primary health care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, National Public Health Institute (KTL), Finland.
authors.forename: Antti
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Uutela
authors.forename: Pilvikki
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Absetz
authors.forename: Aulikki
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nissinen
authors.forename: Raisa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Valve
authors.forename: Martti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Talja
authors.forename: Mikael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fogelholm
mesh_terms: D001524:Behavioral Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D005387:Finland; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D011314:Preventive Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011634:Public Health