Promoting health behaviours at the individual level for NCD prevention and control

The focus of this chapter is on behaviour change at the individual level to reduce NCD risk. The chapter explains that sociology, genetics and neuroscience all make a significant contribution to shaping an individual’s behaviour and their role needs to be considered and then addressed when looking to change an individual’s behaviour. Understanding that behaviour is the result of both impulses and conscious reflection is important for triggering and supporting behaviour change and this chapter provides a description of motivational theory to understand how individuals act. The chapter outlines why individual behavioural programmes for NCD prevention and control, therefore, need to recognize martial forces to help people use their conscious reflective motivation and psychosocial resources to counteract those other drivers that they do not perceive to affect them, but which can derail their attempts to change behaviour. The chapter explains that behaviour change often requires both a trigger and follow-up supportive actions, and also describes the successful elements of behavioural support programmes. The chapter also describes individual interventions to improve medication adherence and concludes by summarizing the importance of population-wide policy frameworks to support individual behaviour change programmes.