ABSTRACT
Making people aware of their ability to make healthy choices and how they can be supported to do this within their lives is problematic. How to achieve this has been a major point of discussion and debate in the field of health promotion and public health. Over the years, the understanding of how we all make choices about actions that can impact on our health has become more sophisticated. Chapter 6 elaborates in more detail about the health behaviour theories and models that seek to address this problem. But one thing that many theories and models have in common, for example, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen 2012) and the Stages of Change Model (Prochaska & DiClemente 1984), is acknowledging that there are factors that influence or mediate our ability to make healthy choices. This chapter seeks to explore in more detail the mediating factors that disproportionately influence women’s ability to make healthy choices in reaction to health promotion or public health interventions. It then seeks to explore how these mediating factors can be influenced in a positive way through health promotion and public health interventions, which will involve considering two other health promotion approaches: empowerment and social change.
