The health belief model (HBM) was one of the first, and remains one of the best known social cognition models. It is a health behavior change and psychological model developed by Irwin M. Rosenstock in 1966 for studying and promoting the uptake of health services. The model was furthered by Becker and colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s. Subsequent amendments to the model were made as late as 1988, to accommodate evolving evidence generated within the health community about the role that knowledge and perceptions play in personal responsibility. Originally, the model was designed to predict behavioural response to the treatment received by acutely or chronically ill patients, but in more recent years the model has been used to predict more general health behaviors. The HBM suggests that your belief in a personal threat together with your belief in the effectiveness of the proposed behaviour will predict the likelihood of that behaviour.
An example of the health belief model would involve an individuals' opinion about a certain disease and the behavior they encompass to the disease. Mary commutes to work everyday. It is flu season and the virus is rampant. Mary believes that she will not catch the virus because she has a strong immune system. During lunch, she does not feel the need to wash her hands. Mary's behavior to the fact she believes she is immune to the virus would likely lead to her contracting the disease.
Read more about Health Belief Model: History, Constructs, Applications
Famous quotes containing the words health, belief and/or model:
“At last I feel the equal of my parents. Knowing you are going to have a child is like extending yourself in the world, setting up a tent and saying “Here I am, I am important.” Now that I’m going to have a child it’s like the balance is even. My hand is as rich as theirs, maybe for the first time. I am no longer just a child.”
—Anonymous Father. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 5 (1978)
“The belief that established science and scholarship—which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making—are “objective” and “value-free” and that feminist studies are “unscholarly,” “biased,” and “ideological” dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture!”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The striking point about our model family is not simply the compete-compete, consume-consume style of life it urges us to follow.... The striking point, in the face of all the propaganda, is how few Americans actually live this way.”
—Louise Kapp Howe (b. 1934)