Education Commons^™

Translating Policy, Systems, And Environmental Change For Use In The Family Context, Erin L. Yelland, James S. Bates

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Theorists argue that emphasizing changes to the policies, systems, and environments in which individuals live has more economical and sustainable impact on human health than interventions targeted directly to individuals (Kegler et al., 2015). We believe, however, that the ecology of the family remains an essential context for influencing individual behavior and contend it crucial that family life educators acknowledge the impact of family-level health-improvement initiatives. As such, we propose a behavior-change model for the family context that reflects the impact of interconnected family rules (policy), family relationships (systems), and the home (environment) on individual behavior, and acknowledge the underlying …