Improving health messaging and communication: Perspectives from an academic and son of an Italian barber
Unfortunately, while the evidence supporting the value of healthy living behaviors is beyond dispute, the United States (U.S.) continues to be mired in unhealthy lifestyle pandemics.1 In this context, why does healthy living medicine, so supported by evidence, continue to suffer from such poor compliance on a population level? This important question has led to a new collaboration and line of inquiry, focused on the cultural drivers of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors, using the American Nations model developed by Colin Woodard2, briefly described as follows: Cultural geographers have long recognized First Settler effects on the characteristics of national cultures, with Wilbur Zelinsky’s “Doctrine of First Effective Settlement”3 arguing that “the dominant culture of a given nation is determined by the characteristics of the first group of settlers…regardless of how small the initial band of settlers might have been.”
