Welcome to Health Styles
The Health Styles tool provides healthcare practitioners with a means to develop a deeper understanding of their patients as well as local and national population. Health Styles uses the Healthy Foundations Lifestages Segmentation Model, a powerful, accurate and reliable tool that ‘segments’ respondents using just 19 ‘golden questions’.
The model is 88% accurate and builds on existing research and knowledge. It is one of the most rigorously constructed public sector segmentation models. It offers insights into the needs, lifestyles and health motivations of individuals and groups within society.
The Health Style building blocks
The Health Styles tool provides a number of ‘building blocks’ that can be used to understand attitudes or behaviour. It captures all the complex dynamics between an individual’s personal motivation to live healthily (motivation dimension) their social and material circumstances (environment dimension) and which stage they are in life (life-stage dimension). The blocks can be used individually or together.
Motivation
There are many attitudes that influence health behaviours e.g. the extent to which an individual holds a long-term/short-term life view; whether individuals are complacent about the relationship between risky behaviours and their health and the extent of an individual’s confidence in their own ability to make positive changes to their health and well-being. These and several other attitudes and beliefs questions are used to construct the different motivation segments or “health styles”
Environment
External factors, such as whether your live in a deprived area, your household income and the quality of local health and education services all have an influence on a person’s attitudes and their beliefs that they can improve their health. The Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) is a tried and tested measure which captures many of the factors described above. IMD scores are available for every post code within England and Wales and these can be used in conjunction with the motivation segments to better understand how people with different health styles cope under different circumstances.
Life-stage
Over the course of their life a person will travel through several life-stages e.g. moving away from home, settling down, having children, staying single, getting divorced, looking after relatives or retiring. There are numerous events and opportunities associated with each life-stage which can precipitate healthy or unhealthy behaviours. We have identified nine possible life-stages across the adult lifescourse. Knowing your Health Style and your life-stage will help you and your clinician make a more informed decision about what you can change to improve your health.
Its overall aim is to provide a powerful insight tool to help understand population subgroups and target scarce health resources. Employing such insight will result in a more holistic way of helping people to change their unhealthy behaviour, or to maintain healthy behaviour – rather than always taking a disease- or issues-based approach.
How to use the result
For the public: discuss your segment with your healthcare clinician to help you receive the healthcare approach that is right for you.
For the healthcare clinician: understand individual and local segmentation quickly, to focus resources where they are most needed. Moving beyond demographics and factoring in attitudinal and psychographic data (a person’s overall approach to life, including personality traits, values, and beliefs) provides a rounder picture of individuals and is a good starting point for developing tailored interventions.
For mangers, commissioners and policy makers: understand the segments in your local or national population to shape policies/interventions and bring about service changes helping allocate resources appropriately.
Nationwide statistics
1404 people have taken part in the online quiz so far, the five core motivational segments from these participants break down as follows:
These groups can be found within every social stratum in society – from the most deprived to the most affluent areas.
Analysis by Life Stage
As a person travels through different life-stages, numerous events and opportunities associated with each life-stage encourage healthy or unhealthy behaviours. The Health Styles quiz describes the life-stage as well as the motivational segment, when combined these results offer valuable insights in how best to tailor interventions.
Freedom years under 25
This means you’ve never lived with a partner and never had any children.
Freedom years over 25
This means you’ve never lived with a partner and never had any children.
Younger settler
This means you are aged under 45, living with partner, have no children in household and no caring responsibilities.
Older settler
This means you are aged 45 or over, living with partner, no children in household and no caring responsibilities.
Younger juggler
This means you are aged under 45, and either have children in the household or significant caring responsibilities.
Older juggler
This means you are aged 45 or over, either have children in the household or significant caring responsibilities.
Alone again
This means you you have previously lived with a partner or had children but don’t currently have a partner or children in the household.
Active retirement with partner
You’re in active retirement with a partner.
Active retirement without partner
You’re in active retirement without a partner.
Resources
Link to pdf: Healthy Foundations Life-stage Segmentation Model Toolkit