Investigating the Effect of Educational Intervention Based on the Health Belief Model on Nutritional Behaviors that Prevent Cardiovascular Diseases

Health recommendations to adopt health behaviors are implemented by the patient if they are internalized as beliefs in the patient’s mind and are expressed in their actions. This study investigated the effect of educational intervention based on health beliefs on the nutritional behaviors that prevent cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in middle-aged women of Sarbaz city in 2021. This interventional research was a pretest-posttest control group design. The statistical sample was 90 people, which were randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 30) and control (n = 60) groups. Computer-generated random numbers were used for simple randomization of subjects. First, both groups were asked to answer the questionnaires, then training was provided to the intervention group, and finally, both groups were asked to answer the questionnaires again. The data was collected using the health belief, food frequency, and nutritional behavior questionnaire (FFQ). Analysis of variance, chi-square, independent t-test, and paired t-test were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the educational intervention was effective in increasing the constructs of the health belief model that prevent CVDs (awareness, P = 0.001; susceptibility, P = 0.014; severity, P = 0.005; benefits, P = 0.020; barriers, P = 0.005; self-efficacy, P = 0.000). Also, the educational intervention improved nutritional behaviors that prevent CVDs (increased vegetable (P = 0.001), fruit (P = 0.001) consumption; reduced fat (P = 0.001), and sugar (P = 0.001) consumption). According to the findings, it can be said that increasing the awareness of middle-aged women about nutritional behaviors is a necessity to reduce the incidence of CVD risk factors.