Family Health and Well-Being

Family is the fundamental institution of organization in society. It provides the social environment where individuals are born, nurtured, learn to socialize and where an individual’s behavior and views take shape. It is within the family that sociocultural traditions and economic influences including those that affect health are extended to individuals and in turn impact health behavior. The different nature of families whether joint or nuclear, continue to play a pivotal role in nurturing and socializing children and influencing the development of adolescents, serving as a support structure for family members, influencing health impacting behaviors – both positive and negative and providing opportunities and role models for healthy living.

Faith to Action Network members invest in family health and well-being, enabling human beings to develop and enjoy full and fulfilling lives. Faith to Action Network aims to ensure that faith actors are empowered to lead change and take action for better family health and well-being. Through its programmes, Faith to Action Network promotes discussions on how families influence health behaviors and outcomes through the life-course; Identify programme initiatives that can assist families to adopt healthy lifestyle options; and identify the way forward across sectors that can empower families to adopt healthy practices.

As communities of faith, we are called upon to attend to the “total person,” that is, address the person holistically. Our different religious traditions address the physical, social, emotional, intellectual, occupational, political, security, economic, and environmental dimensions of wellness. Consequently, issues relating to family health and well-being are integral to our identity as communities of faith.

Members are acutely aware of the numerous challenges that women, adolescents and young people and children face in our communities. In particular, we are struck by the limited access to information and services, the high incidences of teenage pregnancy, gender-based violence, HIV infections, and limited nutrition options that destroy or derail people’s lives.

Our faiths encourage all people, including adolescents and youth, to acquire life-giving knowledge. Accessing age-appropriate, accurate and up-to-date information about how our bodies function, promoting healthy sexuality and preventing violence enables individuals to contribute constructively towards their communities and flourishing societies. We encourage our members to seek knowledge and services so that, alongside the teaching of our faiths, they can make informed choices

The family, as a setting of practice, is increasingly recognized as critical to health promotion. A better understanding of the nature and process through which families take an active part in their own health can serve as the basis for designing and linking health interventions with public health programs. The integrating function of the family, viewed through an ecological context, makes it an effective entry point and central focus in health promotion.

Using the social ecological model Faith to Action Network programmes to identify factors at different levels (the individual, the interpersonal level, the community, society; that contribute to poor health and to develop approaches to prevention intervention and health promotion that include action at those levels. This approach focuses on integrating approaches to change the physical and social environments rather than modifying only individual health behaviours.

Through this model Faith to Action Network is able to identify community-engaged partnerships to identify a comprehensive list of factors that contribute to poor health and develop a broad approach to health problems that involves actions at many levels to produce and reinforce change.

Individual

The first level of the model (at the extreme right) includes individual biology and other personal characteristics, such as age, education, income, and health history. The second level, relationship, includes a person’s closest social circle, such as friends, partners, and family members, all of whom influence a person’s behaviour and contribute to his or her experiences. The third level, community, explores the settings in which people have social relationships, such as schools, workplaces, and neighbourhoods, and seeks to identify the characteristics of these settings that affect health. Finally, the fourth level looks at the broad societal factors that favour or impair health. Examples here include cultural and social norms and the health, economic, educational, and social policies that help to create, maintain, or lessen socioeconomic inequalities between groups (CDC, 2007; Krug et al., 2002).

Given their trusted and strong presence, there is tremendous potential for faith organisations to influence people’s choices on family health and wellbeing. Faith to Action Network mobilizes faith organizations’ support for integration and streamlining of policies, services, and funding for family health and well-being. Through Family health promotion Faith to Action Network supports families through faith and community spaces to work on improving or maintaining their physical well-being of the family unit and its members’. Changing the values, norms and behaviour patterns in a social unit like the family may create longer-lasting and larger scale behavioural change.

By targeting the individual level our programmes are concerned with an individual’s knowledge and skills which helps inform them about how susceptible they are to the health threat. Knowledge helps a great deal by influencing key attitudes and decisions individuals make. Faith to Action Network uses Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC), mass campaigns such as social media with targets many individuals at once. Behaviour change communication works by raising awareness about the problem, increasing knowledge about the health benefits of the targeted health behaviour change, promoting attitude changes in favour of the healthier behaviour, reducing stigma surrounding the healthy behaviour, creating demand for the health intervention, promoting services for the prevention and control of the health problem, and improving skills of self-efficacy for the individuals involved.

Interpersonal Relationships

The interpersonal level has to do with a person’s relationships with other people – family, friends, and so on. At this level, Faith to Action Network uses behaviour change communication and social change communication.

Social Change Communication

Faith to Action Network uses social change communication in combination with social behaviour change communication, at the interpersonal level to encourage participation, and targets large scale behaviour changes. Behaviours targeted include social norms and culture-specific practices. We use interventions such as mass-media campaigns, social-media campaigns, or information communication technology strategies, which can act as catalysts for health behaviour change. The system of social change communication is built on the idea that an individual community has the ability to change unhealthy social norms, cultural practices, environmental favours, and policies on their own. The collective efficacy these populations gain from such social change communication can enable them to make additional health behaviour changes in the future.

The Organizational / Community Level

This has the opportunity to reach more people in different sectors of the community. Faith to Action Network mobilizes relevant stakeholders to pool resources and ideas together in order to improve community health. For example, we collaborate with the MoH in our programme areas to have some of their health care workers teach health education in a nearby school; coordinate health events designed to educate and equip affiliates with knowledge and materials to help prevent health threats and promote service uptake; At the community level, social change communication and social mobilization is used.

Social Mobilization

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. By using the social mobilization approach, they are empowered to make their own health changes. This also allows the community to help with the development of appropriate health interventions, implementation of such changes, and monitoring of the changes. In order to effectively develop behaviour, change interventions, interventions at other levels of the Social Ecological Model should also be used.

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. The government should set the laws and enforce those laws. This level of the Socio-ecological Model is important because it affects a larger portion of the population than the other levels.

Advocacy

Advocacy consists of well-thought out and organized efforts designed to convince individuals in leadership roles, such as policymakers, program planners, and community leaders, to make health changes at the policy level. Faith to Action Network has used three different types of advocacy – policy advocacy, community advocacy, and media advocacy to (1) to promote the development of new policies, change existing governmental or organizational laws, policies or rules, and/or ensure the adequate implementation of existing policies (2) to redefine public perceptions, social norms and procedures, (3) to support protocols that benefit specific populations affected by existing legislation, norms and procedures, and/or (4) to influence funding decisions for specific initiatives”.

Through policy advocacy, we have encouraged legislative, social, and infrastructural element changes via policy both at sub-national, national and regional level. Faith to Action Network has also encouraged individuals withing communities to demand policy changes using community advocacy. Additionally, through media advocacy we have pushed policy makers towards changes, which make the environment healthier.

Faith to Action Network programmes are targeting all the groups at multiple levels simultaneously through multilevel interventions so as to promote long-term behaviour change.