Health Belief Model

The Health Belief Model is commonly used for health promotion and health education. Its’ underlying concept is that health behavior is explained by perception of the disease and the strategies available to lower its occurrence. There are four perceptions of the HBM, which are perceived seriousness, perceived benefit, perceived susceptibility and perceived barriers. In addition to that, more constructs are added to health belief model that includes motivating factor, cues to action and self-efficacy. Each of these constructs in combination or individually, could be used to determine health behavior. The HBM also provides guidelines for the program development allowing planners to address reasons for non-compliance with recommended health action. The health belief model is a process used to promote healthy behavior among individuals who may be at risk of developing adverse health outcomes. A person must gauge their perceptions of severity and susceptibility of developing a disease. Then it is essential to feel vulnerable by these perceptions. Environmental factors can play a role as well as cues to action such as media, and close friends. In order to determine that taking action will be meaningful, the benefits to change must be weighed, against the barriers to change behavior (Green & Murphy, 2014).

The health belief model is composed of two factors that influences a person’s particular health behavior: the perceived health threat and the perceived threat reduction (pros and cons). Using the health belief model, there are three factors considered when perceiving a health threat: general health values, specific beliefs about personal vulnerability/susceptibility, and beliefs about the consequences of the disorder as well as the severity of it. In the scenario, Charles is a college student that smokes cigarettes and is fully aware of the risks and consequences associated with doing so because of the Surgeon General’s warning.

The study had an overall total of 1150 participants. Although there were many participants to begin with, they did not provide all of the feedback the researchers had requested.  This resulted in the expulsion of their participation, so their results were not included in the final reports of the study. The number of patients that did provide the essential information added up to a total of 901. The profile for a participant was a patients diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in the last 6 months, but has been diagnosed no more than 10 years ago. They had to be between 35-70 years of age. Their BMI had to be more or less than 24 kg/m2 and have an HbA1c more or less than 6.5%. They also had to have treatment with a diet or oral glucose lowering medication. Those needing insulin shots, had been diagnosed with chronic diseases, or had a change in diet or lifestyle 3 months prior to the study were not included in the overall

The Health Belief Model (HBM) of health behaviour change was originally developed in the 1950s in order to understand and explain why vaccination and screening programs being implemented at the time were not meeting with success (Edberg 2007). It was later extended to account for preventive health actions and illness behaviours (Roden 2004). Succinctly, it suggests that behaviour change is influenced by an individuals’ assessment of the benefits and achievability of the change versus the cost of it (Naidoo and Wills 2000).

For the year 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, 29.1 million people in the united states had diabetes, and of those 21.0 million people were diagnosed and 8.1 million people were undiagnosed (2014). The number of people that have the disease can be used to illustrate the major impact the disease has on society. The disease can affect an individual directly through personal diagnosis. When family member is diagnosed with type II diabetes, it can indirectly affect their close relatives by the increased risk that they may one day be diagnosed with the disease because of genetics. The fact that 8.1 million people were undiagnosed in 2012 should be very concerning for both healthcare providers and society (CDC, 2014). The proper management and compliance is very important with type II diabetes and cannot be initiated until a diagnosis is made. When the disease is uncontrolled other complications can occur. This creates a negative effect on society due to the deficit that exist. Whether the actual impact the disease has on society is positive or negative can be related to whether the disease is properly diagnosed and managed accordingly. Although type II diabetes is a part of society working to try to prevent the disease and timely diagnose the disease is a positive impact diabetes has on society. Increase education about the signs and symptoms of the disease and screenings could aid in the early diagnosis of the disease. Earlier diagnosis can aid in better prognosis of the

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is stated that “every 40 seconds, someone in the U.S. has a stroke” (“Stroke,” 2018). Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States, which include coronary heart disease, stroke, and other related conditions. There are various modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors associated with heart disease, such as age, family history, diet, physical inactivity, high blood pressure, and more (“2016 Community Health Assessment,” 2017). About 795,000 people suffer from stroke each year and it is more common among the elderly, ages 65 years and older, in the United States (“Stroke,” 2018). The consequences of stroke can be detrimental,

The purpose of the study is to gauge and keep the blood glucose levels, the lipid and lipoprotein levels and the blood pressure levels at a normal and safe range, as well as to prevent or slow the growth of chronic diabetes complications by nutrition controls and intense lifestyle

Boskey (2014) concludes that a person’s willingness to change their health behaviors includes perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived barriers, and cues to action and self-efficacy. For example, Carpenter (2010) report the Health Belief Model stipulates that a change may occur if individuals see an adverse health outcome to be severe and perceive them to be vulnerable to it. Other perceptions include benefits of behaviors that reduce the likelihood of that outcome to be high, and the barriers to adopting those behaviors low (Carter, 2010). Furthermore, the HBM addresses the relationship between a person’s beliefs and behaviors. It provides a way of understanding and predicting how clients will behave about their health and how they will comply with healthcare therapies (Boskey, 2014).

However, only about 50% of diabetes patients in the U.S. receive formal DSME (Nelson, Chapko, Reiber, & Boyko, 2005). Through DSME, diabetics acquire the knowledge and learn the skills necessary for successfully modifying their behavior and self-managing their disease. The intention of educating these patients about their disease and its accompanying conditions is to help them achieve optimal health status, better quality of life, and reduce their needs for expensive healthcare (AADE, 2014). Diabetes education emphasizes on behaviors that are essential to improving diabetics’ health status and quality of life and which are within patients’ control. These behaviors are referred to as the AADE7TM (American Association of Diabetes Educators 7 Self-Care Behaviors) and are summarized in the figure to the right. (Mulcahy, et al., 2003).

In few words, studying the aspects of the health belief model, patients can accept or reject the designed and appropriate interventions. For example, if a patient is unaware of his or her risk factors for one or more diseases, direct teaching toward informing the patient about personal risk factors. If the patient is aware of the risk, but feels that the behavior change is overwhelming or unachievable, efforts on helping the patient have the ability to overcome the perceived barriers.

First, the HBM insist individuals are likely to change behavior if they believe they are susceptible to certain condition, and the condition is severe enough. Cues to action provide a guide for individual to engage in the healthy behaviors. Benefits must overrule barriers, and the individual must have confidence that he or she can engage in this healthy behavior for the change to occur. To illustrate, one of the diabetes healthy people 2020 objective is to “Increase the proportion of adults with diabetes who perform self-blood glucose-monitoring at least once daily”

Social Cognitive Theory, Health Belief Model, and Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change are the three models I chose to discuss. An electronic database searched was completed. Three articles were chosen to summarize and discuss each of the above models.

Conner and Norman, 1995 describe the health belief model as ‘the oldest and most widely used model in health psychology’. It originated in the 50’s and was developed further by Hochbaum, Rosenstock and Kegals throughout the 1980’s for health education programmes and to predict different health behaviours and responses to treatments. The four terms that are the basis for the HBM are perceived susceptibility, perceived barriers, perceived severity and perceived benefits. The behaviour of the individual depends on their belief that they are susceptible to a health problem, how serious they deem it to be, whether they think that treatment will benefit them and if there are barriers that may get in the way.

B) The 5 constructs of the Health Belief Model I will chose are, the Perceived susceptibility, the Perceived severity, the Perceived benefits, the Perceived barriers, and the Self-efficacy. I would increase them all, because they are the 5 most important ones out of the 6 total and they will give the best results to the individual.

The Health Belief Model (HBM) is one of the first theories of health behavior. It was developed in the 1950s by social psychologists in the U.S. Public Health Services to better understand the widespread failure of tuberculosis screening programs. Today it continues to be one of the most widely used theories. Research studies use it to explain and predict health behaviors seen in individuals. There is a broad range of health behaviors and subject populations that it is applied in. The concepts in the model involve perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. Focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of individuals being studied create an understanding of their