Motivational Interviewing in Health Promotion

Abstract Motivational interviewing (MI) is a client-centered approach for social workers to enable individuals, families, and communities to address complex health and social challenges and promote health. The core components of MI include four micro-skills (i.e., open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries); four tasks (i.e., engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning); and “spirit,” which is composed of four relational skills (i.e., compassion, acceptance, partnership, and empowerment). During the past several decades, MI has become an important strategy for helping professionals enable individuals, families, and communities to address complex health and social challenges and promote health. Social workers play a critical role in delivering evidence-based practices across diverse settings and levels of care, from universal prevention to intensive, individualized support. MI is believed to be effective because it helps people resolve ambivalence by influencing how they talk about change. In turn, the way people talk influences how they behave—or think, if the target of change is a belief or attitude. MI has a robust evidence base, is relevant in many service settings, and has applications that span the continuum of services from primary prevention to intensive, individualized support.