Health Belief Model

What is the Health Belief Model?
• It is one of the theories developed to explain health-related behaviors.
• It is an intrapersonal explanatory theory.
• It was originally designed to explain why people did not participate in free health promotion programs.

What are the constructs of the HBM?
1- Perceived Susceptibility: This is the subjective belief that a person may be a patient for the disease and may enter a harmful state as a result of a particular behavior.
2- Perceived Severity: which is the belief in the extent of the harm that can result from the acquired disease as a result of certain behavior.
3- Perceived Benefits: This is the belief in the advantages of the methods to reduce the risk to a certain behavior.
4- Perceived Barriers: This is the belief regarding the actual and imagined cost of following new behavior.
5- Cues to Action: This is the accumulating force that makes a person feel the need to do a certain action.
6- Self-Efficacy: Confidence in one’s ability to pursue a specific behavior. It is the most powerful construct in all of the Health Behavior theories.
It predicts the initiation, continued performance and long-term maintenance of healthy behaviors.
Its effects include:
-Acceptance of a challenging task.
-Persistence
-Beliefs of Competence
-Strategy use
-Performance

Applications of the HBM
The HBM was originally formulated to explain (Preventive) health Behavior
Many practitioners and researchers have used the HBM. Its applications can be divided into three categories:
1- Behavioral research model building and instrument development.
2- Primary Prevention.
3- Screening for diseases, compliance with treatment and other secondary prevention tasks. For example, fear of breast cancer would increase awareness and motivation to get mammograms.