Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:58:27.923Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Developmental origins, behaviour change and the new public health*

Part of: Sir David Barker Symposium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2015

M. Barker
M. Barker*
Affiliation:
MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, UK
*
* Address for correspondence: M. Barker, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton SO16 6YD, UK. (Email [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A developmental approach to public health focuses attention on better nourishing girls and young women, especially those of low socio-economic status, to improve mothers’ nutrition and thereby the health of future generations. There have been significant advances in the behavioural sciences that may allow us to understand and support dietary change in young women and their children in ways that have not previously been possible. This paper describes some of these advances and aims to show how they inform this new approach to public health. The first of these has been to work out what is effective in supporting behaviour change, which has been achieved by careful and detailed analysis of behaviour change techniques used by practitioners in intervention, and of the effectiveness of these in supporting change. There is also a new understanding of the role that social and physical environments play in shaping our behaviours, and that behaviour is influenced by automatic processes and ‘habits’ as much as by reflective processes and rational decisions. To be maximally effective, interventions therefore have to address both influences on behaviour. An approach developed in Southampton aims to motivate, support and empower young women to make better food choices, but also to change the culture in which those choices are being made. Empowerment is the basis of the new public health. An empowered public demand for better access to better food can go a long way towards improving maternal, infant and family nutrition, and therefore the health of generations to come.

Keywords

behaviour changedevelopmental originsdietpublic healthyoung women
Type
Review
Information
Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease , Volume 6 , Issue 5: Themed Issue: David Barker commemorative meeting, September 2014; Prenatal Exposures and Health Outcomes , October 2015 , pp. 428 - 433
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press and the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper is based on a presentation given at the David Barker Commemorative Meeting in Southampton, UK, 18 September 2014.

References

1. Barker, D, Barker, M, Fleming, T, Lampl, M. Support mothers to secure future public health. Nature. 2013; 504, 209–211.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2. Haider, BA, Bhutta, ZA. Multiple-micronutrient supplementation for women during pregnancy. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012; 11, CD004905.Google ScholarPubMed
3. Pena-Rosas, JP, De-Regil, LM, Dowswell, T, Viteri, FE. Daily oral iron supplementation during pregnancy. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012; 12, CD004736.Google ScholarPubMed
4. Potdar, RD, Sahariah, SA, Gandhi, M, et al. Improving women’s diet quality preconceptionally and during gestation: effects on birth weight and prevalence of low birth weight—a randomized controlled efficacy trial in India (Mumbai Maternal Nutrition Project). Am J Clin Nutr. 2014; 100, 1257–1268.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
5. Cancer Research UK. More Britons ‘get’ links between lifestyle and cancer, but poor diet and lifestyle are still the norm, 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2015 from http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-us/cancer-news/news-report/2015-02-04-britons-aware-of-links-between-lifestyle-and-cancer-but-action-is-lacking.Google Scholar
6. Bates, B, Lennox, A, Prentice, A, et al. National Diet and Nutrition Survey: Results from Years 1-4 (Combined) of the Rolling Programme (2008/2009–2011/12). 2014. Public Health England and Food Standards Agency: London.Google Scholar
7. Michie, S, Ashford, S, Sniehotta, F, et al. A refined taxonomy of behaviour change techniques to help people change their physical activity and healthy eating behaviours: the CALO-RE taxonomy. Psychol Health. 2011; 26, 1479–1498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
8. Michie, S, Abraham, C, Whittington, C, McAteer, J, Gupta, S. Effective techniques in healthy eating and physical activity interventions: a meta-regression. Health Psychol. 2009; 28, 690–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Michie, S, van Stralen, MM, West, R. The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implement Sci. 2013; 6, 42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Hardeman, W, Johnston, M, Johnston, DW, et al. Application of the theory of planned behaviour in behaviour change interventions: a systematic review. Pscyhol Health. 2002; 17, 123–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11. Strack, F, Deutsch, R. Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior. Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2004; 8, 220–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
12. Marteau, TM, Hollands, GJ, Fletcher, PC. Changing human behaviour to prevent disease: the importance of targeting automatic processes. Science. 2012; 337, 1492–1495.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
13. Robinson, SM, Crozier, SR, Borland, SE, et al. Impact of educational attainment on the quality of young women’s diets. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004; 58, 1174–1180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
14. Barker, M, Lawrence, W, Crozier, S, et al. Educational attainment, perceived control and the quality of women’s diets. Appetite. 2009; 52, 631–636.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
15. Lawrence, W, Schlotz, W, Crozier, S, et al. Specific psychological variables predict quality of diet in women of lower, but not higher, educational attainment. Appetite. 2011; 56, 46–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. Ross, CE, Wu, C. The links between education and health. Am Soc Rev. 1995; 60, 719–745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17. Barker, M, Lawrence, W, Skinner, TC, et al. Constraints on the food choices of women with lower educational attainment. Public Health Nutr. 2008; 11, 1229–1237.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
18. Lawrence, W, Skinner, TC, Haslam, C, et al. Why women of lower educational attainment struggle to make healthier food choices: the importance of psychological and social factors. Psychol Health. 2009; 24, 1003–1020.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
19. Jarman, M, Inskip, HM, Ntani, G, et al. Influences on the diet quality of pre-school children: importance of maternal psychological characteristics. Public Health Nutr. 2014; (Suppl. 1) 1–10, (FirstView).Google ScholarPubMed
20. Black, C, Ntani, G, Inskip, H, et al. Measuring the healthfulness of food retail stores: variations by store type and neighbourhood deprivation. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2014; 11, 69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
21. Black, C, Ntani, G, Kenny, R, et al. Variety and quality of healthy foods differ according to neighbourhood deprivation. Health Place. 2012; 18, 1292–1299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
22. Marteau, TM, Hall, PA. Breadlines, brains, and behaviour. BMJ. 2013; 347, f6750.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
23. Marteau, TM, Ogilvie, D, Roland, M, Suhrcke, M, Kelly, MP. Judging nudging: can nudging improve population health? Br Med J. 2011; 342, d228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
24. Barker, M, Baird, J, Lawrence, W, et al. The Southampton initiative for health: a complex intervention to improve the diets and increase the physical activity levels of women from disadvantaged communities. J Health Psychol. 2011; 16, 178–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25. Lawrence, W, Black, C, Tinati, T, et al. ‘Making every contact count’: longitudinal evaluation of the impact of training in behaviour change on the work of health and social care practitioners. J Health Psychol. 2014; E-pub 8 April 2014; doi:10.1177/1359105314523304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26. Baird, J, Jarman, M, Lawrence, W, et al. The effect of a behaviour change intervention on the diets and physical activity levels of women attending Sure Start Children’s Centres: results from a complex public health intervention. BMJ Open. 2014; 4, e005290.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
27. Mead, EL, Gittlesohn, J, Roache, C, Corriveau, A, Sharma, S. A community-based, environmental chronic disease prevention intervention to improve healthy eating, psychosocial factors and behaviours in indigenous populations in the Canadian Arctic. Health Educ Behav. 2013; 40, 592–602.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed