NEXUS: Researching the Social Contexts of Health Behaviour

2003 Research Unit Award

NEXUS is a multidisciplinary research unit focused on developing knowledge, interventions and policy recommendations that are sensitive to the social contexts that shape health behaviours of individuals and practices of health care providers. Unit researchers will focus on exploring, describing and recommending actions to address the social contexts that create barriers to health, affect individual capacity to maintain a healthy lifestyle or to effectively seek and benefit from health services, and influence how systems (such as health and judicial) respond.

Traditional approaches to promoting healthful behaviour have focused primarily on individuals. This approach is theoretically and methodologically limited, frequently blames victims and perpetuates a false belief that health behaviour change is solely a matter of individual choice. To effectively support health and health-seeking behaviour (i.e., the processes individuals undergo as they make decisions about their health), it is necessary to look beyond individual characteristics, propensities and desires and focus on the complex and multiple social, economic and environmental factors that affect health behaviour.

The mission of NEXUS is to develop knowledge, interventions and policy recommendations that are sensitive to the social contexts that shape the health behaviours of individuals and practices of health-care providers. NEXUS has adopted a three-dimensional model of the social contexts that shape health behaviour to guide its research program. Located in this model are three axes, the first of which represents three substantive sub-themes of research conducted by the unit:

• Barriers to Health – Factors that put individuals, families and communities at risk for adverse health outcomes, with a focus on exposure to tobacco use, stress, unsafe sexual health practices and violence within intimate relationships and the workplace.
• Health-Seeking Behaviour –The influence of social context on the complex processes that individuals undergo as they make decisions about their health with respect to several areas of well-being, including prevention, early recognition of and decision making around seeking treatment for cancer, heart disease and sexually transmitted diseases.
• System Responses – Examining how complex systems respond to and shape health behaviour by focusing on three high priority areas:
  
  • Systems responses that support health (e.g., how institutions organize work to protect and promote workers’ health).
  • Systems responses to specific health problems (e.g., nicotine addition; emergency responses to acute heart problems).
  • Systems responses to emerging technologies (e.g., genetic testing).

The other two axes represent cross cutting perspectives that inform the unit’s overall research approach. The first of these perspectives examines the role and synergistic effects of three key social contexts that influence health: (a) individual and familial factors, such as knowledge, risk perceptions, and skills; (b) the influence of local community organizations, institutions and environments; and (c) the influence of broader social structures and policies. The second cross cutting perspective represents three analytical lenses; gender (factors that account for socially determined roles), diversity (the effect of culture, class, language, sexual identity), and place (influence of life, work and play on well-being) which interact to influence health behaviour.

Completed award term September 2009.

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