Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. It involves a conscious effort to achieve complete physical, mental and social well-being instead of merely surviving or thriving.
Several key areas of your lifestyle are considered wellness dimensions, including exercise, nutrition, sleep and mindfulness. The more you practice these habits on a daily basis, the better your health outcomes will be.
Health Awareness
Health awareness is the knowledge and attitudes that contribute to positive health behaviors and outcomes. It includes education and advocacy to improve health status, as well as community-based programs to reduce risk for chronic diseases and other morbidities.
As the health promotion field has grown, it has increasingly embraced social determinants of health as a primary component of its interventions, promoting programs that address underlying conditions that influence modifiable risk behaviors. These conditions include economic, social, and cultural factors that shape the life experiences of individuals.
While health awareness campaigns are important, they can be limited if they do not convey a broader message about improving population health as a social responsibility to promote healthy contexts. This requires a public health perspective that emphasizes the importance of understanding the root causes of health issues and fostering a political environment that supports a public health approach.
Although many people in the public health community are aware of health awareness days, there is limited scholarly research on their effectiveness. To address this gap, a systematic review of the literature should be conducted, which would focus on outcomes across settings (e.g., workplaces, college campuses), populations (e.g., high vs. low risk), and health issues (e.g., acute vs. chronic).
Personal Responsibility
When it comes to promoting wellness, personal responsibility is an important part of the picture. It can help people regulate their lives and avoid putting themselves at risk for mental and physical problems.
In addition, being responsible can boost one’s self-esteem and confidence. It also helps people develop strong relationships and trust with others.
Despite its many benefits, being responsible can be difficult to achieve. In fact, some people choose to sidestep this responsibility and blame other factors for their problems instead of taking action.
Personal responsibility teaches people to take ownership of their choices and actions, understand that they can influence their outcomes, and accept responsibility for their behavior. Moreover, it enables individuals to overcome challenges and set goals in order to improve their health and well-being.
Health Motivation
Health motivation is the reason why people make changes to their diet, exercise routines and other healthy habits. Having a strong wellness vision can help you stay motivated when your resolutions start to fall off track.
The best way to keep up your commitments is to set goals that you truly enjoy doing and that are connected to your deepest values. So instead of focusing on a specific goal weight or body shape, you might choose to focus on spending more time with your grandchildren or taking a walking holiday with your friends.
Increasing motivation is an important first step, but further strategies may be needed to enact the behavior and maintain it over time. In addition, research is needed to better understand how motivation can be incorporated into more comprehensive approaches to health behaviours.
Health Behaviors
Wellness consciousness is a psychological trait that has been shown to predict a variety of health attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, individuals with high levels of wellness consciousness are more likely to engage in health information seeking and use.
It has been also found that health behavior is a dynamic phenomenon, with context-dependent variables playing an important role. This is especially true for smoking, alcohol use, diet, physical activity, and risky sexual behaviors.
The study of health behaviors is an essential determinant of public health because they are associated with lower mortality, morbidity, and healthcare costs. This is because these behaviors prevent disease and prolong life span.
