Health Belief Model

The health belief model stipulates that a person’s health-related behavior depends on the person’s perception of four critical areas: perceived seriousness or the severity of a potential illness, perceived susceptibility or the person’s susceptibility to that illness, perceived benefits or the benefits of taking a preventive action, and the perceived barriers or the barriers to taking that action. Self-efficacy, cues to action and motivating factors has also been added to this module for expanding the constructs to help explain different health behaviors.
Women with a family history of osteoporosis usually feels more susceptible to developing osteoporosis than those who do not have a family history of osteoporosis, as women with a family history of osteoporosis have almost double the risk of developing osteoporosis. This is one of the prime reasons for women not engaging in behavior to prevent osteoporosis. According to the HBM model, unless a person feels susceptible enough to feel the pressure, he or she will not try to cure it. Women in general perceive the barriers to exercise and calcium as low and the benefits of exercise and calcium as high but still the lack of self-efficacy and the lack of susceptibility make them do nothing about reducing the risk of osteoporosis in them. …show more content…
In all these cases, HBM has been used to explain different behaviors and also acted as basis for