The Health Belief Model (HBM) was created in 1952 to understand why people make certain health-related choices (Hochbaum et al., 1952). These choices include things like eating healthy food or exercising to stay healthy, and also behaviors like smoking or seeking medical help when they are sick.
The HBM suggests that when people think about their health, they often feel worried about getting sick. This worry is called “threat perception.” They also consider how likely they think it is that they could get sick or have health problems, which is called “risk perception.” Additionally, they think about how serious the consequences of being sick could be.
The model says that people decide to take certain actions to address these worries and concerns about their health. They weigh the benefits they believe they will get from taking a specific health-related action against the obstacles or barriers they might face in doing it. For example, someone might think about the benefits of eating nutritious food (like feeling strong and energetic) and the barriers (like the cost of healthy food) before deciding what to eat.
Critics of the HBM say that it focuses too much on the individual and does not consider other factors that can influence health decisions, like a person’s background (such as their income level, ethnicity, age, or gender) or how they cope with stress and challenges. Due to these criticisms, the modern version of the HBM now takes into account other factors like a person’s demographics, psychological traits, how motivated they are to care for their health, and the things that might prompt them to take action (like getting advice from a doctor or seeing a health-related advertisement) (Abraham & Sheeran, 2015).
Abraham, C., & Sheeran, P. (2015). The health belief model. In M. Conner, & P. Norman (Eds.), Predicting and changing health behavior: Research and practice with social cognition models (3rd edition, pp. 30 69). Maidenhead, Berkshire: Open University Press.
Hochbaum, G., Rosenstock, I., & Kegels, S. (1952). Health belief model. United States Public Health Service.
