The Effect of Educational Program Based on the Health Belief Model on Brucellosis Preventive Behaviors among Traditional Ranchers in Rural Areas of Hamadan Province

Educating of brucellosis preventive behaviors is a necessity to reduce the incidence of disease in at-risk groups. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of educational program based on Health Belief Model (HBM) on brucellosis prevention behaviors among traditional ranchers in rural areas of Hamadan province.
This experimental research was a pretest-posttest with control group study that was conducted on traditional ranchers of the villages of Hamadan province, which were identified as the focal points of brucellosis in 2016. In this study, 70 ranchers were randomly selected and divided into experimental and control groups. The data were collected using a questionnaire including demographic information, knowledge, behavior checklist and HBM constructs. Then, the experimental group received educational interventions in 4 teaching sessions with the presentation of films and the use of video and text messages. Data were analyzed by SPSS-20 software using chi-square, fisher exact test, independent t-test and paired t-test.
The results showed that after the intervention, the mean scores of knowledge, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived self-efficacy, cues to action and prevention of brucellosis in the experimental group were significantly increased in comparison to the control group (P Results of this study showed that educational interventions based on health belief model can effectively improve brucellosis preventive behaviors among traditional ranchers.