Creating Health Behavior Change

How to Develop Community-Wide Programs for Youth

"I have no doubt that this book will be extremely useful to folk involved in programmes that aim to improve health outcomes of children and adolescents. It's brevity, among other factors, ensures that most people who buy, borrow or steal the book will actually fulfil an intention of reading it cover-to-cover!" --Alan J. Fisher, University of Cape Town Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health The purpose of this book is to provide a process for the development of effective community-wide health behavior programs for children and adolescents. Significant behavior change among young people across a variety of behaviors and community-based research studies has been achieved through programs that have been created based on this 10-step process. These steps will be discussed in four primary stages: preparing for program development; determining the program components; creating the health behavior program; and implementing and maintaining a program. The intent, then, of this book is to provide steps for developing programs that will lead to meaningful change in improving the health behaviors of young people in our communities, in the broader context of improving physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being.