BY SAMIE WAIKORI
AUKI
HUMAN behaviour is very important in health setting as it affects health and quality of life.
Director of Health Promotion Division of MHMS, Mr Ben Rickie said yesterday that behaviour is the result of a complex interplay of internal and external drivers.
He said individuals and groups will consider their values beliefs, perceptions and knowledge as they make decision.
Rickie said people’s decisions are also influence by contexts, social norms and group expectations.
“As people interact with their environments where they work, live and play, they decisions and the setting will affect their health outcomes for better or worse.
“Collectively, human behaviours result in human activity that can create or destroy health.
“It is only in the 21st century that the world has reached consensus on the urgent need to address human activity that has plunged the planet into a state of crisis, from relentless use of fossil fuels to destruction of the physical environment,” he said.
Rickie said efforts to mobilise support for sustainable development started in the 1990s with the Unite Nations Conference on Environment and Development or Agenda 21, the Kyoto Protocol, Rio+20, the Sendai declaration and COP21 among others.
He said WHO has long recognised the importance of behaviour and settings in achieving better health and quality of life.
Rickie said health promotion was defined as the process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health in 1986 through the Ottawa Charter.
He said health promotion challenged the dominant biomedical approach in public health and pave the way for uptake of a broader socio-ecological model for population health.
Rickie said this would articulate a different role of the health sector include, creating supportive environments, developing personal skills, strengthen community action, building healthy public policy and reorienting health systems.
