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Health Belief Model Essay

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How do patients change their behaviour to better their health outcomes?
This patient has a strong significant family history of heart disease. This puts him at a very high risk of an IHD and M.I itself. He is obese, does not have a healthy diet and still smokes which adds to his already significant risk. Without behaviour change he has a favourable chance of having another heart attack. Therefore it is important that he changes his behaviour. I.E. Lose some weight, better his diet and cut his smoking to zero. Nice in 2007 showed evidence that changing a person’s health related behaviour can have a significant change on their morbidity and mortality.(1) As a country we are throwing medicine at as many illnesses as possible. Prevention is always better than cure and it is also cheaper. In this essay different models of behaviour change will be discussed.
The health belief model (HBM) is the most popular model that tries to explain and predict health behaviours. It was developed in the U.S in the 1950s. This model focuses on individual’s belief and attitude. The health belief model assumed that a person will take action if (2)
a) Feels that a negative condition can be avoided e.g. Heart attack in this case
b) Has a positive expectation that by taking an action, he/she will avoid a negative health …show more content…

However, there are limitations. It assumes the individual has the acquired resources and opportunities to be successful in the behaviour change regardless of intention. It talks about behaviour intent but not behaviour action. In other words, it talks about intention to make a behaviour change but not when they will start to actually make the change. Similarly to the HMB, it does not take into account other emotions that play an influence on behaviour change, such as fear, mood or threat. It does not take into account environmental or economic factors as well.

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