The Health Belief Model ( Hbm ) Essay

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).

All too often we hear on the news of the devastating effects of a disease that could have been prevented by vaccines, but because of parents refusal to vaccinate their infants and children, public health professionals are now confronted with a health crisis. The importance of vaccinations is to provide children with added protection because of a young, developing immune system. Consequently, vaccines will help in boosting the immune system in recognizing and protecting children from vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, mumps, and pertussis, also known as whooping cough.1 For example, pertussis, a bacterial infection that is preventable by vaccines, has infected 16 million persons worldwide, and causes about 195,000 deaths

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).

In the 1950’s the health belief model (HBM) was introduced to explain why people who are healthy, continue to participate in activities that keep them free of illness; while others neglect to be involved with healthy activities (Pender, Murdaugh, & Parsons, 2015). PubMed was used to find this article with the limitations of an article written in the last five years, humans, and English; the Mesh words used was health belief model. The article Applying the health belief model to college students’ health behavior, written by Kim, Ahn, and No, in 2012, reviews the study done to explain the use of HBM on college students and healthy students. This paper will discuss the use of the health belief model, in college students, to determine if their knowledge of nutrition will affect their healthy behaviors.

Vaccinations contributes to the overall suppression of a disease. The more children that are vaccinated, the lower the reports of infection and deaths due to a disease are. The Center for Disease Control, in an article supporting immunizations, mentions a case in Japan where 80% of the children were vaccinated for pertussis, or whooping cough. That same year the number of deaths reported were zero and the infection count was below 400 children. After a while, parents stopped thinking that their children needed to be vaccinated. That following year only 10% of the children were vaccinated, which resulted in the death rate increasing by 41% and the number of infections being thirty two times larger than the previous year. When comparing and contrasting the years, whether not a child got the vaccination proves to be a huge factor in determining

people are vaccinated and health or medical care is less accessible. Pertussis infects a large number of people yearly, and in part have killed many. Schools are also a place of concern for uninfected children to become infected. According to ("Old college try applying", 2015) schools and day cares have had the most concentrated number of cases of pertussis. Preventative measure are imperative so that children do not get the disease.

The Pertussis is something that maybe parents don’t take seriously because it’s a possibility they believe it will never happen to their child. A strong recommendation to help decreases the cases of pertussis is to be stricter with shot requirements such as children can’t enter school or daycare without it and if they aren’t able to afford it because of issues with insurance, they should be offered the shot at a discount rate so that low-income families would qualify for it.

United States vaccination rates seem adequate at first glance, however, a closer look reveals the truth. In general, vaccinations for children entering into kindergarten is over 90% for majority of the ones that doctors recommend. With a closer look though, there were significant local variations. Only about 52% of kindergarteners and 4% of sixth graders were sufficiently immunized against pertussis for the 2010-2011 school year in Washington State’s San Juan County. With no surprise, the county had one of the state’s highest pertussis rates. With these facts, some parents feel that vaccinations are not good. They argue that they can cause serious and sometimes fatal side effects, that they contain harmful ingredients and that vaccines are unnatural, and natural immunity is more effective than vaccination. Supporters of vaccinations feel that vaccines can save children's lives, the

Growing up, vaccinations were a normal part of childhood along with a loose tooth and a scraped knee. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that vaccinations will prevent more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children born in the last 20 years (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). However, in recent years, vaccinations have become a controversial issue among parents, with many choosing not to vaccinate their children. This dangerous trend has emerged largely due to a discredited link between vaccines and Autism, and caused a resurgence of several life-threatening diseases which had been all but eradicated. With the safety of all people in mind, as well as easing the financial strain on our health care system from treating preventable diseases, vaccines for children should be mandatory.

Recently, there has been a rising anti-vaccine movement amongst parents that is consequentially giving disease, such as whooping cough and polio, a 2nd life (USA Today). This movement is supported by the ignorance of some parents who believe that vaccines cause autism and other highly unlikely issues, and by experts who are taking advantage of their authoritative appeal. With the mounting evidence available through various sources, one would think the vaccination of their children would be a no-brainer. However, there is as much misinformation as well and it is feeding the argument for anti-vaccination.

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).

To get vaccinated or to not get vaccinated is a very important issue that is now back on the rise. The target group for this paper would be young mothers and college aged adults. The purpose of this paper is to describe and demonstrate how the Health Belief model can be used to teach a person the importance of vaccinating themselves and their children. As a new, young parent many people do not know the benefits of vaccines and they don’t understand the harm they put themselves and their child in if they remain unvaccinated.

Both the health belief model (HBM) and theories of reasoned action/planned behavior (TRA/TPB) are two model that has their root from psychology. Both models rely on social cognition as a mechanism to change individuals’ behaviors. Opponent criticizes the models for being unable to target social influence outside of an individual and overlook difference between target audiences.

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.

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