Pages: 49-64
Introduction.
Worldwide, obesity rate registered an incremental increase: among adults it has more than doubled since 1990, and has quadrupled among children and adolescents (5 to 19 years of age), posing a heavy threat on societies, reducing life expectancy, increasing healthcare costs, decreasing workers’ productivity and lowering states’ GDP (OECD, 2019). Tackling obesity requires a multidisciplinary approach as it is a form of social contagion of endemic proportions that does not respect the mode of transmission of infectious diseases and a form of addiction that includes cognitive and emotional components that are difficult to stop by conventional means.
Aim of the study.
We used a chronological approach to examine the evolution of the Health Belief Model (the HBM) in time for predicting the engagement in specific, health-related, behaviors. Our review was grounded in the assumption that health behavior is activated based on relevant perceptions of threat, barriers and benefits, self-efficacy and cues to action in engaging in protective behavior, variables of the conceptual model that formed the main inclusion criteria for the articles included. We search scientific articles from 3 periods of time (1960-1989, 1990-2014 and 2015-2024) that capture the evolution of the model conceptualization and the refining of the methodological approach that applies the model to inform practical public health concerns. Then, we narrow down our aim and assess problematic beliefs, values and attitudes that influence health-related behavior in obesity prevention that aim to serve as a future framework for tailored interventions.
