Abstract
The important influence of the environmental context on health and health behavior—which includes place, settings, and the multiple environments within place and settings—has directed health promotion planners from a focus solely on changing individuals, toward a focus on harnessing and changing context for individual and community health promotion. Health promotion planning frameworks such as Intervention Mapping provide helpful guidance in addressing various facets of the environmental context in health intervention design, including the environmental factors that influence a given health condition or behavior, environmental agents that can influence a population’s health, and environmental change methods. In further exploring how to harness the environmental context for health promotion, we examine in this paper the concept of interweaving of health promotion into context, defined as weaving or blending together health promotion strategies, practices, programs, and policies to fit within, complement, and build from existing settings and environments. Health promotion interweaving stems from current perspectives in health intervention planning, improvement science and complex systems thinking by guiding practitioners from a conceptualization of context as a backdrop to intervention, to one that recognizes context as integral to the intervention design and to the potential to directly influence health outcomes. In exploring the general approach of health promotion interweaving, we examine selected theoretical and practice-based interweaving concepts in relation to four key environments (the policy environment, the information environment, the social/cultural/organizational environment, and the physical environment), followed by evidence-based and practice-based examples of health promotion interweaving from the literature. Interweaving of health promotion into context is a common practice for health planners in designing health promotion interventions, yet one which merits further intentionality as a specific health promotion planning design approach.
Highlights
A growing body of evidence highlights the influence of the context that surrounds us on our health and health-related behaviors, including where we live, study, work, pray, and play [1]
Health promotion planning frameworks such as Intervention Mapping (IM) [22] provide helpful guidance in developing health interventions focused on changing individuals, and the environmental context with which the individual interacts on a daily basis
A growing number of organizations and initiatives have embraced similar health-by-design approaches in which interventions are explicitly developed in relation to the environmental context, including the Health, Behavioral Design, and Built Environment Project of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research [93], OLE! Texas- a state-wide initiative aimed at enhancing childcare outdoor environments [94], the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation funded Go Austin-Vamos
Summary
A growing body of evidence highlights the influence of the context that surrounds us on our health and health-related behaviors, including where we live, study, work, pray, and play [1]. For health promotion interweaving into context as a health intervention design approach in relation to the policy, information, social/cultural/organizational, and physical environments These theoretical and practice-based concepts were chosen to illustrate how health interventions can directly build from, connect with, and “interweave” health promotion into different environments located within settings and geographic place that hold potential to influence health and health behavior. Examples of environmental assets that may be identified during the needs assessment phase include a code of conduct for employees in the policy environment (interweaving concept: HiAP), existing communication channels such as a parent bulletin board in the school information environment (environmental print), established forms of social organization such as a neighborhood civic council in the social/cultural/organizational environment (appropriable organization), and existing physical spaces for intervention activities in the physical environment (shared use).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
