Modelling innovative interventions for optimising healthy lifestyle promotion in primary health care: "Prescribe Vida Saludable" phase I research protocol

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The adoption of a healthy lifestyle, including physical activity, a balanced diet, a moderate alcohol consumption and abstinence from smoking, are associated with large decreases in the incidence and mortality rates for the most common chronic diseases. That is why primary health care (PHC) services are trying, so far with less success than desirable, to promote healthy lifestyles among patients. The objective of this study is to design and model, under a participative collaboration framework between clinicians and researchers, interventions that are feasible and sustainable for the promotion of healthy lifestyles in PHC.</p> <p>Methods and design</p> <p>Phase I formative research and a quasi-experimental evaluation of the modelling and planning process will be undertaken in eight primary care centres (PCCs) of the Basque Health Service – OSAKIDETZA, of which four centres will be assigned for convenience to the Intervention Group (the others being Controls). Twelve structured study, discussion and consensus sessions supported by reviews of the literature and relevant documents, will be undertaken throughout 12 months. The first four sessions, including a descriptive strategic needs assessment, will lead to the prioritisation of a health promotion aim in each centre. In the remaining eight sessions, collaborative design of intervention strategies, on the basis of a planning process and pilot trials, will be carried out. The impact of the formative process on the practice of healthy lifestyle promotion, attitude towards health promotion and other factors associated with the optimisation of preventive clinical practice will be assessed, through pre- and post-programme evaluations and comparisons of the indicators measured in professionals from the centres assigned to the Intervention or Control Groups.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>There are four necessary factors for the outcome to be successful and result in important changes: (1) the commitment of professional and community partners who are involved; (2) their competence for change; (3) the active cooperation and participation of the interdisciplinary partners involved throughout the process of change; and (4) the availability of resources necessary to facilitate the change.</p

Self-bias and the emotionality of foreign languages

Article first published online: June 13, 2018Foreign language contexts impose a relative psychological and emotional distance in bilinguals. In our previous studies, we demonstrated that the use of a foreign language changes the strength of the seemingly automatic emotional responses in the self-paradigm, showing a robust asymmetry in the self-bias effect in a native and a foreign language context. Namely, larger effects were found in the native language, suggesting an emotional blunting in the foreign language context. In the present study, we investigated the source of these effects by directly comparing whether they stem from a language’s foreignness versus its non-nativeness. We employed the same self-paradigm (a simple perceptual matching task of associating simple geometric shapes with the labels “you,” “friend,” and “other”), testing unbalanced Spanish–Basque–English trilinguals. We applied the paradigm to three language contexts: native, non-native but contextually present (i.e., non-native local), and non-native foreign. Results showed a smaller self-bias only in the foreign language pointing to the foreign-language-induced psychological/emotional distance as the necessary prerequisite for foreign language effects. Furthermore, we explored whether perceived emotional distance towards foreign languages in Spanish–English bilinguals modulates foreign language effects. Results suggest that none of the different indices of emotional distance towards the foreign language obtained via questionnaires modulated the self-biases in the foreign language contexts. Our results further elucidate the deeply rooted and automatic nature of foreign-language-driven differential emotional processing.This research has been partially funded by grants PSI2015-65689-P and SEV-2015-0490 from the Spanish Government, AThEME-613465 from the European Union, and a 2016 BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators awarded to the last author (J.A.D.)