Health Belief Model (HBM)
The Health Belief Model (HBM) is a psychological model that attempts to explain and predict health behaviors by focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of individuals. The HBM was developed in the 1950s as part of an effort by social psychologists in the United States Public Health Service to explain the lack of public participation in health screening and prevention programs (e.g., a free and conveniently located tuberculosis screening project). Since then, the HBM has been adapted to explore a variety of long- and short-term health behaviors, including sexual risk behaviors and the transmission of HIV/AIDS. The key variables of the HBM are as follows (Rosenstock, Strecher and Becker, 1994): …show more content…

In addition to the stages and influences listed above, the authors of the
ARRM (Catania et al., 1990) identified other internal and external factors that may motivate individual movement across stages:
•Internal aversive emotional states (e.g., high levels of distress over HIV/AIDS or alcohol and drug use that blunt emotional states) may facilitate or hinder the labeling of one's behaviors.
•External motivators: • public education campaigns, an image of a person dying from AIDS •informal support groups, may also cause people to examine and potentially change their sexual activities.
To date, ARRM studies in the United States have examined a variety of
Populations:
including people attending HIV testing clinics, gay and bisexual men, unmarried white, black and hispanic heterosexuals adolescent females attending family planning centers

Results from a published study revealed how difficult it was for urban and rural women in Zaire to label their behavior as problematic: only one-third of the study participants felt personally at risk for contracting HIV/AIDS (Bertrand, Brown, Kinzonzi, Mansilu and Djunghu, 1992). Other research has expanded the