Health Belief Model Research Paper

A wise man once said “good health is not purchasable, but should be valued and never taken for granted”. As the world continues to rapidly transform and our scientific findings expand, the field of Public Health must continue to innovate to reach our goals for healthier humans on this planet. I believe good health is one maintaining balance of their physical, emotional, and spiritual state. This includes also valuing their own life, the lives of other, and taking responsibility of their own body. Balance is keeping each health state at a stabilized position. Reaching a high level of well being is imperative for keeping that “balance” to maintain good health. Throughout my many life experiences, this belief of “balancing one’s health” and
“valuing one’s life” has allowed many in my culture and I to reach high levels of well-being. Once, health is viewed using these components, we can aggressively approach the health problems of the future with optimism and assurance of a positive outcome. The role health education plays in the future of humans that walk on this planet is essential. Health education is all about influencing and increasing the knowledge of the public about health. I believe teaching the public the importance of “balancing their health” and “valuing their own body” will allow them to have a sense of purpose and reason. Our health education systems should adhere to these two components to assist in our core efforts to improve the health outcomes of others.
I believe health education is for me because the work which it entitles, address my core philosophical beliefs. Also, my integrity, my cooperative nature, and my concern for others fit right in a lined with the work health educators have to do. Overall, I believe health education is the right field of work for me since I will able to use my strongest abilities everyday on the job.
Part 2
After reading the conditions that were given to me, I believe my health philosophy would be the most effective approach to the issue the Philadelphia school district is facing. Educating teenagers about STIs and pregnancy is a daunting task; however, it is not impossible to implement a philosophy that will be effective in getting the job done. As health educators, it is our job to make sure that we do in all our efforts to prevent negative health outcomes using all available resources given to us. My philosophy involves two components which are “balancing one’s health” and “valuing one’s body”. Applying these two parts to the Philadelphia school district prevention on STIs and pregnancy is realistic. If we can create a program where the students in middle school and high school can learn to “value their own body” and keep a “balance in their personal health”, I believe the school district can achieve success in preventing STIs and pregnancy.
Part 3
I would approach preventing STIs and pregnancy using the health belief model.
Based off the information given to me, I believe it would be the most appropriate and beneficial to the middle school and high school students. The Health Belief Model is an intrapersonal theory that “addresses a person’s perceptions of the threat of a health problem and the accompanying appraisal of a recommended behavior for preventing or managing the problem (Glanz & Rimer, 1995, pg 17). In other words, this theory will focuses on students past experiences, knowledge, attitude, motivations, skills, beliefs, and other individual factors. The new behavior change I would promote is the use of contraceptives. The constructs I will be using of the Health Belief Model are perceived susceptibility, perceived benefits, and cues to
action. Most students believe that their susceptibility or chance of getting STIs is low. This belief is common because a lot of them don’t have enough knowledge of what exactly is STIs at the middle school age. Moreover, the high school students face the issue of not believing they have a greater chance of contracted a STI. Also with the issue of pregnancy most students don’t know exactly risk factors of teenage pregnancy. In my program, I would create a skit using real life examples to educate the students about their susceptibility of getting pregnant or contracting a STI. I would use several statistics that in the skit that address ones chance of contracting a STI or teenage pregnancy rate.
The second construct I would address is perceived benefits. Perceived benefits involve the student making a conclusion that the new behavior would be better than what they are already doing. I would apply this construct to our situation b y using a large poster listing the health benefits of using contraceptives. Also, we would give out each student a paper that had at least 1 benefit of using contraceptives and ask them to discuss it in a group. The idea is not make them think that “is not using contraceptives even worth the risk”. Once explaining this in well detail, I believe they would be left to make a well informed decision.
Lastly, I would leave the students with cues to action.
The reason I used this construct is because now we need the students to actually do something with the information that was presented to them. As a health educator, we are given the task to prevent poor health outcomes and giving them cues to action will be necessary to know if the program is successful. The cues to actions I would give to the students in this given situation would be showing them a video that address the dangers if they don’t take the steps of using contraceptives. Especially, since the group of students I would be dealing with or inner city students, I would have a video that relates back to them so that they feel as though this information is relevant to them. I believe these three constructs are important to address so that the students are left educated about pregnancy and
STI’s.