Application of Health Belief Model on Promotion and Prevention of Cervical Cancer in Women Aged 30-60 years, at Nonghan Sub-District, Kudchum District, Yasothorn Province

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental research was to study the application of Health Belief Model (HBM) in the promotion of cervical cancer prevention among women aged 30-60 years old. It was conducted in Nonghan Sub-District, Kudchum District, Yasothorn province. A total of 60 women in the targeted age group were purposively selected from 2 villages, 30 persons per village; and one village was randomly assigned to be the experimental group and the other as the control group. A series of activities was conducted in the experimental group including providing knowledge about cervical cancer, demon-strating the cervical cancer screening test, exchanging opinion, proposing models, sharing past experienced of screening test, and home visits in order to convince and encourage women to attend the screening test. Routine cervical cancer services were provided to the control group. Data were collected through question-naires; and were analized by using pair t-test and independent t-test and chi-square test. It was found that after applied the HBM, the experimantal group had significantly higher scores on perception of risk factors, severity of disease, benefits and good practices in cervical cancer prevention, barriers to prevention prac-tices, and motivation for cervical cancer prevention, when compared to the scores before the intervention as well as to those of the control group (p<0.001). In conclusion, this study indicated that HBM was quite effective and should be used as a tool to promote self-care and cervical cancer screening test in order to achieve early prevention of cervical cancer in women.