Health Behaviour Change (HLTH90001)

This wholly online subject will introduce students to key theories, concepts and frameworks underlying contemporary approaches to health behaviour change in individuals across the health-illness spectrum, for health practitioners providing care to patients, and at the population level. The subject will enable students to develop skills in the design and evaluation of health behaviour change interventions that are evidence informed and tailored to clinical practice across the lifespan, health care services and community contexts.

The subject is divided into modules to allow flexibility for students to choose areas of health behaviour change to focus on that best match their disciplinary interests or work context.

All students will complete four modules within this subject.

A foundational module will be completed by all students and introduces some key theoretical models underpinning health behaviour and health behaviour change, core concepts in health care that relate to effective health behaviour change facilitation, and a framework for development of interventions to support positive change will be applied. Students will develop skills in the integration of theory into behaviour change intervention development including behavioural analysis, and will explore a wide range of behaviour change techniques including conversational methodologies for changing behaviour (such as motivational interviewing), the role of patient education and therapeutic alliance, and the use of technology to support change.

Students will then choose two from three modules that best meet their learning interests and/or practice or discipline interests. These modules are:

1. One-to-one interactions

In this stream we will apply health behaviour change theory and principles to case scenarios to see how these concepts might look in a clinical individual interaction setting.

2. Clinicians and health services.

In this stream we will apply a step-by-step approach to developing behaviour change interventions with the goal of changing clinician behaviours or redesigning health service delivery in order to improve the health of our patients.

3. Populations and communities

In this module, we will look at some behaviour change techniques for influencing the behaviour of communities or populations. We will more deeply examine the role of behaviour change at a public health level.

The final module will be completed by all students and promotes reflection and discussion on the integration and application of evidence-informed health behaviour change practices. This module will also provide students with an opportunity to extend their thinking into the ethics and societal challenges of evidence-informed health behaviour change interventions for individuals and groups.

Throughout the subject students will develop their skills to critically review and synthesise the literature supporting health behaviour change interventions. Students will gather existing evidence on topics related to their discipline, context and interests, critically evaluate the quality of evidence to support health behaviour change interventions, and interpret the clinical application of these approaches.