IMPACT OF HEALTH BELIEFS CHANGE MODEL STRATEGY ON THE RISK FACTORS OF HYPERTENSION AMONG NIGERIAN ARMED FORCES PERSONNEL IN LAGOS STATE

Abstract

Existing scholarly works on cardiovascular diseases failed to examine why some military personnel died of various heart related diseases and why some patients who died of high blood pressure were undiagnosed. Therefore, this study investigated the impact of health beliefs change model strategy on risk factors of hypertension among personnel of Nigerian Armed Forces. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated for the study. The methodology adopted is a pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental research design based on the Health Beliefs Model Hypertension Package. The data were elicited from the three branches of Nigerian Armed Forces, consisting of 180 participants whose blood pressure reading were 130/90mmHg and above. The participants were purposively selected for pre-test and post-test intervention study for the period of eight (8) weeks among Nigerian Armed Forces. Descriptive statistics of frequency count and percentage was used to present the demographic data while inferential statistics of t-test was used for hypotheses one and one way analysis of variance was used for hypotheses two at 0.05level of significance. Findings showed that health belief change model, had a significant impact on smoking, alcohol and dietary behaviours (t=3.832; 2.488, 5.201: P=0.000, 0.015; 0.000) in respect of smoking, alcohol and dietary behaviours of respondents before and after the health belief change model intervention. Significant differences were recorded among the impacts of health belief change model (F=0.17.43;p=0.000). Therefore, to improve health conditions of the personnel suffering from high blood pressure, they should be advised to reduce the intake of salt, increase intake of high fiber diet and low fat consumption.