The definitive step to dealing with health problems in the society today is conceivable through exercising prevention and control measures. Behavioral risk factors form almost half the cause of health issues today. One of the interesting behavioral risk factors as presented in table 7.1 of the text Healthy Population 2010 Objective is that of alcohol misuse and risky drinking.
The effect of alcohol abuse is not only felt by the abusers, but it also felt by the population as a whole. Despite the fact that the legal age of drinking is at 18 years and above (Ezzati & Riboli, 2013); many alcoholics in my community are young people. Some use alcohol regularly, while others move from use to abuse to dependence. Usually, this is associated by behavioral changes as alcohol abuse is mainly related to changes in behavior. In support of the result in the table, more deaths have resulted out of alcohol related crashes with young adults taking the biggest percentage. Alcohol misuse and related problems are increasing day in day out and the deaths are project to increase by 3% by the year 2020 (Ahern & Margerison-Zilko et al, 2013). With regard to this issue, binge drinking among the adolescents is now overtaking other drinking habits. Binge drinking is often done from age 15 and it is triggered by unconventional and sensational seeking behaviors among adolescents. Every so often, the related behavioral risk factors to alcohol abuses result from poor parenting, traumatic experiences and society’s wrong use of media.
In order to deal with this problem therefore, it is important to employ the Population-Based Intervention Model. Using the three intervention concepts each stage of the behavioral risk factor can be controlled with appropriately. To start with, the downstream method can be used to help the older adults especially because they often possess these risky behaviors alone. They will benefit much from self-help groups and individual interventions (Heller & Skinner, 2013). The midstream intervention concept on the other hand could be applied to the young adults who are either at college or working. The method is most effective at this stage because it is geared to deal with a defined population. Lastly, the adolescent risky behavior is best dealt with through the upstream intervention. Many times abuse of alcohol during adolescence is associated with community culture as well as parenting (Walter, 2016).This model would be effective because social norms and healthy behavior shape the actions of adolescents.
- Ahern, J., Margerison-Zilko, C., Hubbard, A., & Galea, S. (2013). Alcohol Outlets and Binge Drinking in Urban Neighborhoods: The Implications of Nonlinearity for Intervention and Policy. American Journal of Public Health, 103(4), e81–e87. doi:10.2105/ajph.2012.301203
- Ezzati, M., & Riboli, E. (2013). Behavioral and Dietary Risk Factors for Noncommunicable Diseases. N Engl J Med, 369(10), 954–964. doi:10.1056/nejmra1203528
- Heller, L. J., Skinner, C. S., Tomiyama, A. J., Epel, E. S., Hall, P. A., Allan, J., … Denollet, J. (2013). Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine, 1997–2000. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_70
- Walter. (2016). Two (Un)Related Spheres?: Understanding Administrative and Critical Research
in Health Communication. Journal of Information Policy, 6, 13. doi:10.5325/jinfopoli.6.2016.0013
