Family self-tailoring: Applying a systems approach to improving family healthy living behaviors.
The adoption and maintenance of healthy living behaviors by individuals and families is a major challenge. We describe a new model of health behavior change, SystemCHANGE (SC), which focuses on the redesign of family daily routines using system improvement methods. In the SC intervention, families are taught a set of skills to engage in a series of small, family self-designed experiments to test ideas to change their daily routines. The family system-oriented changes brought about by these experiments build healthy living behaviors into family daily routines so that these new behaviors happen as a matter of course, despite wavering motivation, willpower, or personal effort on the part of individuals. Case stories of the use of SC to improve family healthy living behaviors are provided. Results of several pilot tests of SC indicate its potential effectiveness to change health living behaviors across numerous populations.
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. Electronic address: smm8@case.edu.
Shirley M
SM
Moore
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.
Lenette
L
Jones
Department of Health Administration and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
Farrokh
F
Alemi
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002648:Child; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D012648:Self Care / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
Behavior change interventions; Family lifestyle change; Habit building; Healthy living habits; Process improvement; System change; System improvement