When the Health Behavior Change model embraces social epidemiology using the intersectionality: The influence of women's social experiences on their health-related decision making processes

A majority of health campaign studies focuses on developing effective strategies to promote individuals’ health-related behaviors. Many of these studies assume that individuals’ behavioral decision is an intra-individual phenomenon that can be influenced by changes in the psychology and cognition in response to the health interventions. However, this approach has often been criticized its lack of consideration of the influence of individuals’ social contexts on their health-related decision making processes. Yet, the decision-making processes and available options are not free from individuals’ social and structural reality. Studies should not decontextualize individuals’ behaviors from their social contexts.

Intersectionality gives a useful insight to incorporate individuals’ social contexts and their life experiences stemming from their social locations to health intervention research. Individuals’ health, health decision-making, and responses to health promotion message are differently shaped by their own social contexts such as gender, race, class, and sexuality. However, those are also influenced by their intersectional positions in multiple social contexts (e.g., poor Black mother with children) and their experiences including women’ oppression, racial discrimination, stereotype, and poverty, which also come from their multiple locations in social contexts.  This paper suggests theoretical integration of intersectionality with health behavior change models and it ultimately aims at proposing an intersectionality-informed health behavior change model to embrace the findings that studies in social epidemiology show. This approach extends the model from an individual level to a social structural level and enlightens the way to practice intersectionality in health campaign beyond using intersectionality to simply understand health disparities.