The spread of healthy behaviors in social networks through megatrend - a promising strategy for potentiating public health interventions

This work aims to design system for describing, analyzing and implementing physical activity (PA) interventions by using information and communication technologies from a complex systems perspective. In the first chapter, i present an observation of PA interventions as a system. In the second chapte...

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Autores:: Montes Jiménez, Felipe

Tipo de recurso:: Doctoral thesis

Fecha de publicación:: 2014

Institución:: Universidad de los Andes

Repositorio:: Séneca: repositorio Uniandes

Idioma:: eng

Description
Summary:	This work aims to design system for describing, analyzing and implementing physical activity (PA) interventions by using information and communication technologies from a complex systems perspective. In the first chapter, i present an observation of PA interventions as a system. In the second chapter, I group PA inteventions by categories and I provide a review of reviews of the reported effects around the globe. I conclude that the effect size of those interventions is, in most of the cases, low or moderate. In the third chapter I propose a model for measuring the potential effect of PA interventions through megatrends, specifically mobile phones and internet. I conclude that there is a potential effect for PA promotion through internet and mobile phones around the globe given that the internet and mobile phone access is high even if the countries income is low. Given the megatrends are behavioral changes observed in population which are driven by social relations, understanding the spread of behaviors through social relations can be crucial for improving the use of megatrends for the spread of healthy behaviors during PA intervention. The social network analysis provides a natural framework for modeling behavioral spreading processes, and allows exploring strategies for designing an intervention in order to transform a social system. For that reason in the fourth chapter I explore models for representing spreading processes in social networks where the spreading drivers are interactions or social pressure. Then I propose a stochastic variation of the deterministic threshold model for representing behavioral spreading processes that could simulate the expected adoption of a behavioral during the implementation of a community-based intervention

The spread of healthy behaviors in social networks through megatrend - a promising strategy for potentiating public health interventions

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