The effect of safety education based on Health Belief Model (HBM) on the workers practice of Borujen industrial town in using the personal protection respiratory equipments

Every year 50-158 million occupational diseases and job accidents occur in the world. Studies on the job injuries show that about 150000 injuries occur annually in Iran. Unhealthy behaviors are important problems in public health. Education is one of the best ways to change unhealthy behaviors. Interventions based on model and theories have many capacities for behavior change. Health Belief Model is one of the health education models that are useful for behavior change. This research has been performed in order to assess the effect of health education program based on health belief model (HBM) to prevent occupational respiratory diseases in workers. Aquasi-experimental design was used for this interventional study, in which 88 of workers of Borujen industrial town participated, who were randomly assigned to experimental and control group. Data collecting tool were a self-administered questionnaire including 53 questions based on health belief model that was completed by the workers, in addition to the performance check list which was conducted by researcher via insensible controlling the worker's safety behaviour. Validity and reliability of the tools were examined prior to the study. Educational intervention was conducted in the first stage following by the second data collection one month later. The data of both experimental and control group were compared statistically before and after the intervention. The results showed that the mean of the grade of all parts of health belief model (HBM) and performance mark of the workers about safety and use of personal respiratory preventive equipment in experimental group after educational intervention compared to prior the study and also compared to control group were significantly increased. The results of this survey showed that by enhancement of health belief model (HBM) components including perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived barriers and perceived benefits, adopting preventive actions increases, too. Therefore, the results of this survey confirm the effectiveness and efficiency of health belief model (HBM) in safety education and adopting preventive actions of respiratory occupational diseases in worker's behaviors.