Supporting and Maintaining Behavior Change

1
Supporting and Maintaining Behavior Change
2
What do we mean by supporting and maintaining
behavior changes?

• Supporting behavior change
• Maintaining behavior change

3
What types of behavior changes need to be
supported and maintained ?

• One-time changes
• Repeated, but finite changes
• Permanent lifestyle changes
• Situational changes

4
What are barriers to taking action and changing
behavior?

• The change is impossible, as the situation stands
• The change is too complex
• The change is too hard to expect people to be
  able to accomplish on their own
• The change takes too much time
• The change is not important enough for the target
  population engage in it
• The target population forgets to perform the
  action that the change requires

5
How do you address barriers to action and support
behavior change?

• Try to do something about the issues that make a
  change impossible.
• Simplify a complex task as much as possible
• Provide support to people accomplish a change.
• Try to cut down the time of a change
• Try to change the population's perceptions about
  a change.
• Institutionalize reminders

6
What are barriers to maintaining behavior change?

• The behavior change has unsatisfactory
  consequences
• The behavior change has excessive negative
  consequences
• Important people provide negative feedback
• Control over the new behavior is less than
  expected

7
How do you address barriers to maintaining
behavior change?

• Try to anticipate and plan for potential problems
  and issues
• Honesty is not just the best policy - it's the
  only policy you should consider.