THE EFFECT OF HEALTH BELIEF MODEL BASED ON EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OF ELDERLY WOMEN

Physical inactivity is one of the most important reasons of chronic medical diseases in the elderly. Regarding to the importance of modifying physical activity behavior in elderly women and to produce proper educational and interventional strategies, this study was aimed to assess the effect of Health Belief Model (HBM) based on education intervention on the physical activity among elderly women.
Two hundred elderly women from Urmia City participated in this interventional study. They were chosen using the multistage sampling method. SPSS 21, and Smart PLS 3.5 soft wares were used for structural equation modeling and to test the hypotheses and the model's fitness.
The results indicated that the education intervention had a positive effect on improving elderly women knowledge and behavior for physical activity. Generally, physical activity knowledge had a direct and increasing effect on the behavior through education intervention program, before intervention (β =0.168, p=0.01) to three months (β =0.180, p=0.01) and six months after intervention (β =0.232, p The results of the current study indicated that the HBM was a proper model for education intervention for the elderly women. In addition, HBM based education program for physical activity improved elderly women behavior.