If you were asked, “How healthy are you?”, how might you answer? Do you exercise? Do you keep a healthy body weight and eat less saturated fat? Your health and wellness is often based on a variety of factors and numbers. For example, body weight, body fat percentage, cholesterol, and depression scales all numerically calculate elements of your health. While these are not the only factors that determine health and wellness, they can illustrate health risks such as contracting a chronic illness like heart disease or diabetes, and can collectively provide you with a comprehensive assessment of your health and wellness. How does learning about your health and wellness influence your health behavior? Do you tend to work out more and eat healthier foods if you have high cholesterol, or do you dismiss the numbers and continue to engage in unhealthy behaviors?

For this assignment, you take the Personal Health Assessment and consider how your personal health and wellness influences your health behavior.

To prepare for this Assignment:

Review the article “Health, well-being and wellness: An anthropological eco-systematic approach.” Consider the factors that influence health behavior.

Complete the following assessment in Health: The basics, 13th edition:

• Chapter 1 Personal Health Assessment “How Healthy Are You?”
• Pay particular attention to your predisposition to health conditions and behaviors that reinforce or change health behavior.

Application Assignment (3-4 pages)

• Summarize any insights you gained as a result of taking the Personal Health Assessment.
• If you are predisposed to any chronic illnesses or disease, explain how this might affect your health behavior, and explain why.
• If you are not predisposed to any conditions, explain how you might reinforce or change your health behavior to prevent the contraction of chronic illness and disease.
• Describe any enabling (e.g. cultural, environmental, social) factors which may influence your health behavior and explain why.

Support your work with specific citations from this week’s Learning Resources and additional scholarly sources as appropriate.

Sources:

Donatelle, R. J. (2019). Health: The basics (13th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pearson.

• Chapter 1, “Accessing Your Health”

Bishop, F., & Yardley, L. (2010). The development and initial validation of a new measure of lay definitions of health: The wellness beliefs scale. Psychology & Health, 25(3), 271–287.
Note: Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Kirsten, T.G.J.C., Van der Walt, H.J.L., & Viljoen, C.T. (2009). Health, well-being and wellness: An anthropological eco-systematic approach. Health SA Gesondheid, 14(1), 1–7.
Note: Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

HealthyPeople.gov (2012). Retrieved from http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/about/default.as…

Required Media

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2012). Personal Health and Wellness: Dimensions of Health Wheel [Multimedia], Baltimore, MD: Author.

• Dimensions of Health: Week 1