Behavior Design: Exploring Nontraditional Approaches to Change Physical Activity Behaviors and Improve Treatment Outcomes

摘要

Physical inactivity is a preventable risk factor for many lifestyle-related chronic conditions and non-communicable diseases, and reducing physical inactivity represents a substantial opportunity for chronic disease prevention, healthcare cost savings, and improved quality of life. Physical activity guidelines recommend regularly engaging in moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activities to elicit health benefits. Similarly, these higher-intensity ranges for physical activity are typically targeted in healthy living interventions. Comparatively, little attention has been focused to date on changing lower-intensity physical activity (i.e., sedentary activity) behaviors. Moreover, it has been proposed in the literature that intervening on sedentary behaviors may be a simpler approach for impacting population health. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to further the discussion that healthy living interventions should be developed to target sedentary behaviors. The physiological consequences of sedentary activity as well as behavior change models typically employed in the health landscape are discussed, and a behavior design model to target sedentary behavior in healthy living interventions is proposed.