Personal Health Engagement

Personal Health Engagement™ (PHE) is the continuum of individual involvement and empowerment in health and wellness. The health engagement process is intended to generate self-fulfillment in daily living and ultimately improve quality of life and health outcomes.

The PHE process starts with effective communication between an individual and his or her health care providers. A productive exchange of ideas and strategies leads to personal accountability and involvement in decision-making that is followed by improvement in clinical care outcomes. PHE can be measured by:

1. Health ownership: a person's belief in his own competence in self-care management. Health status perceptions and health belief systems impact the level of responsibility for self-care.
2. Behavior change motivation: a level of being ready and willing to change certain behaviors in order to improve health status. It is also an attitude towards change and related emotions.
3. Actionable: being prepared to act on self-managements tasks. Determining the specific actions and ability to implement short and long-term goals of self-care management.
4. Utilize support network: the ability to solicit support from HCPs, peers and family.
5. Knowledgeable: the level of knowledge it takes to know what to do about health related behaviors and how to go about it. The ability to assess the risk of health related repercussions.
6. Resourceful: the willingness to solicit information related to self-care from various media channels.
7. Adaptable/Responsive: the willingness to change actions in response to health status changes or changes in psychological or social circumstances.

Healthy Interactions’ PHE programs activate, prepare, empower, and support individuals to act on the desirable behaviors to positively influence outcomes. PHE programs are designed to simplify the process of behavior change for both the patients and the health care professionals involved. The realities of daily living are put into strategic focus, allowing an individual to embrace change and enjoy the process of making the changes in their lives.

PHE programs are inclusive in all aspects of behavior change needed to promote improvement in care. PHE helps in prioritizing on actionable behaviors like healthy eating, physical activity, taking medications, dealing with family, friends, co-workers, health care systems, and decision making for daily tasks. PHE also monitors progress in self-care, relapses, and adjusts for changes in psycho-social circumstances.

PHE methodology is designed to improve patient care outcomes, improve the delivery of care, help the patient, and help the health care professional. Appropriately trained and equipped professionals use the PHE programs either as stand alone curriculums for disease self-management or to complement existing programs.