Development and evaluation of the HEYMAN (Harnessing Ehealth to enhance Young men’s Mental health, Activity and Nutrition) healthy lifestyle program for young adult men aged 18-25 years

Many young adult men (aged 18-25 years) engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviours such as poor eating habits and physical inactivity. Prolonged undertaking of these behaviours can be detrimental to an individual’s physical and/or mental health and may track into adulthood. Despite this, young men have been seriously under-represented in health behaviour change interventions. This thesis used the PRECEDE-PROCEED planning model to guide development of a targeted healthy lifestyle program (HEYMAN study) specifically for young adult men. All steps for development have been presented and preliminary evaluation using a pilot randomised controlled design. The pilot HEYMAN program was highly acceptable and demonstrated preliminary efficacy on a number of health behaviours at 3-months. This provides support for the conduct of a larger, fully-powered RCT, but with minor amendments to research procedures and intervention components required.