Using IF-THEN Plans to Increase Healthcare Professional Delivery of Behaviour Change Interventions During Routine Healthcare

Background and study aims

Public health policies are used to compel healthcare professionals to deliver health behaviour change interventions during routine practice. Making Every Contact Count, a National Health Service (NHS) policy aimed at patient-facing healthcare professionals, places prevention at the centre of every NHS patient-HCP contact. Our previous research showed decreasing levels of healthcare professional delivery of health behaviour change interventions. The investigators were also able to provide recommendations for interventions to support healthcare professionals' capabilities, opportunities and motivations in order to sustain delivery of behaviour change interventions in the long term. One key recommendation was that interventions designed to bolster people's "automatic motivation" (i.e., habits, emotions) would likely lead to increased delivery of behaviour change interventions.

Our recent qualitative research suggests enhancing healthcare professionals' capabilities to deliver behaviour change interventions could focus on providing the necessary support to capitalize on the opportunities created by new technology-based approaches to healthcare consultations in light of COVID-19. One such approach may be to support healthcare professionals in identifying patients' barriers to behaviour change, and linking them with possible enablers.

Automatic motivation may be a key intervention target, yet more research is needed to examine effective interventions targeting this. There is a long track record of research showing that implementation intentions are an effective means of changing behaviour, and that such changes in behaviour can be sustained over years. Implementation intentions help people overcome automatic motivation by making the critical situations that may elicit unwanted habits more salient, and ensuring that alternative strategies are deployed. They are best thought of as "if-then" plans: specifying an "if" ensures that triggers to unwanted habits receive greater attention and linking "ifs" with "thens" (e.g., signposting to appropriate information) ensures that the appropriate responses are automatized and replace the unwanted habit. Forming "if-then" plans thus overcome habits.

Aims