Abstract

COLETA, Marília Ferreira Dela. The health belief model (HBM): an analysis of its contribution to health psychology. Temas psicol. [online]. 1999, vol.7, n.2, pp. 175-182. ISSN 1413-389X.

The Health Belief Model (HBM) was developed in the 50's by social psychologists at the U.S. Public Health Service. It has been considered, among several cognitive models, one of the most widely researched theories for explaining and predicting healthy behaviors. Health beliefs refer to the perceived susceptibility and severity of a disease, and to the perceived benefits and barriers related to prevention and treatment behaviors. The HBM has been used by the author to investigate preventive behaviors of breast cancer, AIDS, and cardiovascular diseases, identifying the subjects' perception of the diseases and their behavior, the relationship between the model variables, and their predictive power in the behaviors under study. Furthermore, the results showed some correlations with external variables and the importance of the educational and economic levels in the adherence to healthy behaviors.

Keywords : beliefs; health; prevention.

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