
In the ecological model health status and behavior are the outcomes of interest (McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler & Glanz, 1988, p. 355) and viewed as being determined by the following:
- Public policy — Local, state, national, and global laws and policies. ...
- Community — Relationships among organizations, institutions, and informational networks within defined boundaries. ...
- Institutional factors — Social institutions with organizational characteristics and formal (and informal) rules and regulations for operations. ...
- Individual. The first level identifies biological and personal history factors that increase the likelihood of becoming a victim or perpetrator of violence. ...
- Relationship. ...
- Community. ...
- Societal.
What are the stages of socio-ecological model?
What is ecological framework?
What is the final level of public policy?
Why is it necessary to take action with multiple levels of the model at the same time?
Why is socio-ecological model important?
How are health behaviors determined?
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ECOLOGICAL MODELS of Health Behavior and Health Promotion
Brief Description: Ecological Models are comprehensive health promotion models that are multifaceted, concerned with environmental change, behavior, and policy that help individuals make healthy choices in their daily lives. The defining feature of an ecological model is that it takes into account the physical environment and its relationship to people at individual, interpersonal ...
Ecological Models - Rural Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Toolkit
Theories and Models; View more Ecological Models. Theory at a Glance: A Guide for Health Promotion and Practice frames the ecological perspective as “...the interaction between, and interdependence of, factors within and across all levels of a health problem.
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The Social-Ecological Model: A Framework for Prevention
CDC’s goal is to stop violence before it begins. Prevention requires understanding the factors that influence violence. CDC uses a four-level social-ecological model to better understand violence and the effect of potential prevention strategies.
What is the social ecological model?
The Social-Ecological Model: A Framework for Prevention. CDC’s goal is to stop violence before it begins. Prevention requires understanding the factors that influence violence. CDC uses a four-level social-ecological model to better understand violence and the effect of potential prevention strategies. This model considers the complex interplay ...
Why is it important to act across multiple levels of the model?
Besides helping to clarify these factors, the model also suggests that in order to prevent violence, it is necessary to act across multiple levels of the model at the same time. This approach is more likely to sustain prevention efforts over time and achieve population-level impact.
What are the factors that contribute to the development of a climate of violence?
These factors include social and cultural norms that support violence as an acceptable way to resolve conflicts. Other large societal factors include the health, economic, educational, and social policies that help to maintain economic or social inequalities between groups in society. Prevention strategies at this level include efforts to promote societal norms that protect against violence as well as efforts to strengthen household financial security, education and employment opportunities, and other policies that affect the structural determinants of health.
What are the factors that increase the likelihood of becoming a victim or perpetrator of violence?
Some of these factors are age, education, income, substance use, or history of abuse. Prevention strategies at this level promote attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that prevent violence.
What is the second level of violence?
The second level examines close relationships that may increase the risk of experiencing violence as a victim or perpetrator. A person’s closest social circle-peers, partners and family members-influences their behavior and contribute to their experience.
What are the factors that contribute to the societal inequalities?
Other large societal factors include the health, economic, educational, and social policies that help to maintain economic or social inequalities between groups in society. Prevention strategies at this level include efforts to promote societal norms that protect against violence as well as efforts to strengthen household financial security, ...
What is ecological model?
An ecological model is a strategy used by health promotion programs, which looks at the interaction between factors and elements of a particular health issue. In ecological models – also called social ecological models – the idea is that there are multiple levels of influence affecting health behaviors.
What are the factors that are considered to be part of the ecological framework?
The ecological framework works with what is known as “multiple levels of influence.” These are factors that are defined as follows: individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and public policy.
How does advocacy empower the individual?
Finally, advocacy empowers the individual (sometimes via the community) to take up the cause by demanding policy changes at the leadership level.
Can we save the planet using religion and the ecological model?
However, the study cited above comes with a caveat: “A collaborative partnership approach utilizing principles of community-based participatory research, and involving churches in program design and delivery, is essential for recruitment, participation, and sustainability.” The ecological model works wonderfully in tandem with religious organizations, but it must be implemented in a spirit of “collaborative partnership.” We can save the planet using religion and the ecological model, but only if we work together as equals.
What is ecological model of health?
Ecological model of health behavior is a model that emphasizes the environmental and policy contexts of behavior, while incorporating social and psychological influences. Ecological models lead to the explicit consideration of multiple levels of influence, thereby guiding the development of more comprehensive interventions.
Why is social ecological model important?
The social-ecological model is useful in understanding the reasons as to why we behave the way we do; however, the model still possesses limitations. For example, the model may tell us what factors are contributing to a certain situation, the model does not give insight into how much an effect has over another. This makes it hard for families to uncover which aspect of the model they can focus more on to make a change in their environment or personal actions. Implementation of the social ecological model into communities can be difficult because of cost. For example, it will be difficult to implement violence prevention programs in cities that have high crime and violence rates.
Why is ecological perspective important?
The ecological perspective is a useful framework for understanding the range of factors that influence health and well-being. It is a model that can assist in providing a complete perspective of the factors that affect specific health behaviors, including the social determinants of health. Because of this, ecological frameworks can be used to integrate components of other theories and models, thus ensuring the design of a comprehensive health promotion or disease prevention program or policy approach.
What is the Healthy People 2020 framework?
The Healthy People 2020 framework addresses the importance of ecological models in health promotion and disease prevention. Programs are most likely to be effective when they are designed to address the multiple levels of influence on health behaviors.
What are community factors?
Community factors, such as formal or informal social norms that exist among individuals, groups, or organizations, can limit or enhance healthy behaviors.
What are intrapersonal factors?
Intrapersonal/individual factors, which influence behavior such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and personality.
What is the fifth level of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory?
The fifth and final level of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory is known as the chronosystem. This system consists of all of the environmental changes that occur over the lifetime which influence development, including major life transitions, and historical events.
What is the ecological system theory of child development?
Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory views child development as a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from immediate settings of family and school to broad cultural values, laws, and customs.
What is the macrosystem in ecology?
The macrosystem is a component of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory that focuses on how cultural elements affect a child's development, such as socioeconomic status, wealth, poverty, and ethnicity. Thus, culture that individuals are immersed within may influence their beliefs and perceptions about events that transpire in life.
What is the first level of Bronfenbrenner's theory?
The microsystem is the first level of Bronfenbrenner's theory, and are the things that have direct contact with the child in their immediate environment, such as parents, siblings, teachers and school peers.
Who suggested that the environment of the child is a nested arrangement of structures, each contained within the next?
Bronfenbrenner (1977) suggested that the environment of the child is a nested arrangement of structures, each contained within the next. He organized them in order of how much of an impact they have on a child.
Who was the psychologist who argued that children were ecologically invalid?
American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner was critical of previous theories of child development. He argued that studies of children in unfamiliar laboratory environments with one other person, usually a stranger, were ecologically invalid (See Mary Ainsworth’s 1970 experiment of the ‘ Strange Situation ’). Bronfenbrenner (1974) claimed most ...
Which sociocultural theory is based on the idea that the environment is explicitly or implicitly considered a crucial mechanism in?
Bronfenbrenner’s (1974) perspective has some resemblance to the works of Albert Bandua’s social learning theory and Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in which the environment is explicitly or implicitly considered as a crucial mechanism in development.
What are the stages of socio-ecological model?
There are five stages to this model – Individual, Interpersonal, Organizational, Community, and Public Policy. The individual level is concerned with an individual’s knowledge and skills.
What is ecological framework?
The ecological framework helps explain the result—violence later in life—as the interaction of an individual risk factor, the consequences of complications during birth, and a relationship risk factor, the experience of poor parenting (The World Health Organization, 2018).
What is the final level of public policy?
At the final level – Public Policy – the governing bodies are in charge of the prevention effort. They do this by establishing agencies and laws at every level of government to do research on the spread of STDs and figure out more effective ways of dealing with the problem.
Why is it necessary to take action with multiple levels of the model at the same time?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in order to prevent certain risk factors, it is necessary to take action with multiple levels of the model at the same time (CDC, 2018). When approaching a potential problem, it has been proven that in order to best sustain prevention efforts, action should be taken at multiple levels ...
Why is socio-ecological model important?
This level of the Socio-ecological Model is important because it affects a larger portion of the population than the other levels. For example, a law that ensures that people are immunized before joining an organization or, a law that provides funding to the availability of condoms.
How are health behaviors determined?
Health behaviors are determined by an individual’s relationships and the environment in which they live. These relationships and environments fall within one of the five levels of the Social Ecological Model. The various levels of the Social Ecological Model can be utilized, as part of intervention strategies, to manipulate health behaviors. Behavior change communication, social change communication, social mobilization, and advocacy are the strategies often used as behavior modification techniques.

Multiple Influences on A Specific Health Behavior
Interaction of The Different Levels of The Model
- The Social Ecological Model is a framework put in place in order to understand the multifaceted levels within a society and how individuals and the environment interact within a social system. Different factors and determinants exist at all levels of health, making prevention, control, and intervention most effective when the model is addressed fro...
Methods of Behavioral Change
- Health behaviors are determined by an individual’s relationships and the environment in which they live. These relationships and environments fall within one of the five levels of the Social Ecological Model. The various levels of the Social Ecological Model can be utilized, as part of intervention strategies, to manipulate health behaviors. Behavior change communication, social …
Behavior Change Communication
- Behavior change communication is an approach used alone at the individual level, and along with social change communication at the interpersonal level. This type of intervention works through interpersonal communication. This system can work via direct communication with another individual, but it can also work through mass campaigns, such as social media, which target ma…
Social Change Communication
- Social change communication is used, in combination with behavior change communication, at the interpersonal level and, alone, at the community level. This type of approach encourages participation, and it uses such participation in order to target large scale behavior changes. Behaviors targeted by this approach include social norms and culture-specific practices. This ty…
Social Mobilization
- Social Mobilization is used at the organizational level. Individuals and entire communities use this approach in order to raise awareness of a health problem. Then, this approach is adopted to engage and motivate national and community leaders, public and private partners, and community organizations to make health changes. The catalyst of these health changes is the community. …
Advocacy
- Advocacy is used at the policy/enabling environment level. This approach consists of well-thought out and organized efforts. These efforts are designed to convince individuals in leadership roles, such as policymakers, program planners, and community leaders, to make health changes at the policy level. According to UNICEF, “The purpose for advocacy is (1) to promote the development …
The Purpose of An Ecological Model
- Each or any of these different levels of influence, or the interaction between them, will have an impact on health behavior. Studying the interaction between and interplay of factors helps create the social ecological model.
How to Build An Ecological Model
- After all, people interact with their physical environment as well as their social environment. This interaction works both ways – we all behave in a way that affects those around us and we are in turn affected by the environment around us. This idea of behavior that influences and is in turn impacted by multiple levels of influence is an important element of the ecological perspective; t…
Results of The Ecological Model
- The results of a successfully implemented ecological model can be more than just good strategies for health organizations. They can lead to positive changes in health behavior of individuals and communities. What strategies does the ecological model use? There are a number of ways to change behavior successfully. These include: Behavior change communication, socia…
Emphasizing The “Ecological” in The Model
- While this model has been developed and used successfully in the health sphere, for example in disease control and prevention, the same idea can apply to the environmental sphere. In trying to get people to change their behavior to help the natural environment, we can use the same methods – researching the various factors involved in people’s behaviors. Once the factors hav…