As a geographer by background, I’m especially tuned in to how our everyday geography shapes our choices and, in turn, our health and wellbeing. Since moving from London to Bellevue, WA, I’ve noticed how my new surroundings both big and small are shifting my habits. My default coffee is bigger, and I walk only for leisure (though through beautiful pine trees).
This week, I saw an ad for a nasal flu mist you can take from the comfort of your sofa, and it got me thinking. With so many new at-home testing and preventive care options emerging, how does the home as a site of medical testing and prevention create new opportunities and challenges for helping people stay healthy?
It’s easy to assume that bringing care into the home is a cure-all. But as someone who’s perfected the walk of shame past her Peloton, I can confirm: just bringing something home doesn’t make it happen. The home is becoming a new frontier for care and diagnosis—from collecting samples and getting lab-grade results to receiving chemotherapy, dialysis, or even that flu mist. More healthcare is happening where we live.
You’d think bringing care home would make it easier to act, but starting and following through are still the hardest parts. The logistics are simple; the behavior isn’t. Motivation fades, routines get messy, and good intentions collect dust (like my Peloton in the garage).
A concrete example comes from the UK, where researchers studied cervical screening uptake. Women who were overdue for screening were offered self-sampling kits in different ways. One group received kits opportunistically during a visit to their GP practice, while others were sent kits or letters by post. The results were striking: more than half of the women offered a kit in-person accepted and returned a sample, compared with only 12% for those sent a kit in the mail.
The test was the same. The health benefit was the same. What differed was how and where the offer was made and that context shaped behavior dramatically. This example highlights exactly why behavioral design matters: convenience, timing, personal connection, and context can make the difference between action and inaction.
The challenges go beyond convenience. Some studies have found that people are reluctant to engage in self-testing at home because it can be stressful, having medical equipment around can make the home feel like a place of sickness, and many don’t feel sufficiently confident or competent to carry out the tests or treatments themselves.
The future of home-based health will depend not only on new technology, but on how well we design for those human moments helping people take the first step and actually keep going. The first step is understanding the emotional and psychological meanings people attach to their homes, and how those meanings align with the health behaviors we hope to support.
References
- Opportunistic offering of self-sampling to non-attenders within the English cervical screening programme: a pragmatic, multicentre, implementation feasibility trial with randomly allocated cluster intervention start dates (YouScreen)
- Lim, Anita W.W.Lawrence, Alexandra et al.
eClinicalMedicine, Volume 73, 102672 - Ryan A, Ives J, Wilson S, Greenfield S. Why members of the public self-test: an interview study. Fam Pract. 2010 Oct;27(5):570–81. doi: 10.1093/fampra/cmq043.cmq043 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]