Group Interventions and the Limits of Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

A wide range of interventions has been devised to address health hazards in the social and physical environment. The authors propose a 2-dimensional matrix to organize these interventions. The timing of interventions is divided into 4 stages: preventing exposure to hazard (proactive primary prevention), preventing symptoms from appearing (reactive primary prevention), preventing early symptoms from becoming chronic or leading to disease (secondary prevention), and managing the disease (tertiary prevention). The level at which the intervention is targeted is divided into 2 categories: micro (individual or family) and macro (more aggregate social level). Large-scale interventions such as media campaigns can target either individual health behaviors (microlevel) or the environment (macrolevel). This typology is illustrated with interventions designed to prevent or ameliorate the health consequences of adverse employment changes such as job loss. The analysis concludes that behavioral medicine and public health approaches are differentially suited to different intervention types.

Index Terms:

• behavioral medicine
• social ecology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David Dooley

Dr Dooley is a professor of psychology and social behavior in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, School of Social Ecology, the University of California, Irvine; Dr Catalano is a professor in the School of Health at the University of California, Berkeley.