Lifestyles and behaviours
Individual behaviour plays an important role in determining how healthy or unhealthy people are. Whether someone smokes, misuses alcohol or other substances, how much exercise they do and the quality of their diet – all contribute to their risk of disease, disability and death.
Most of these health behaviours are strongly linked to the environment in which people live their lives, rather than being a free lifestyle choice. And, despite some clear guidelines on what constitutes a ‘healthy’ lifestyle, many people do not achieve this. Effective interventions to address health-harming behaviour therefore requires a broad and complex set of responses.
Exposure to multiple behavioural risk factors is linked to higher risk of poor health outcomes, and more commonly affects people living in disadvantaged circumstances.
This section gives an overview of lifestyles and behaviours in Hackney and the City of London.