ABSTRACT

Background: Addiction are a major public health concern that is increasingly expanding across the world , affecting consumers, their communities and their environments causing psychological and economic problems for health and crippling societies, with a growing decrease in consumer age.

Aim: To assess the effect of an educational intervention based on Health Belief Model on preventive behaviors of addiction among university students in Mosul City.

Method: This study is based on True experimental design by using the random controlled trial approach is conducted. A probability (simple random sample) of (N=80) undergraduate student. Data were gathered in 1st of October 2019 till 12 of May 2020 using a questionnaire method. The instrument consist of two parts; part I, involved, to describe the student's socio-demographic characteristic such as age, gender, grade, college, socioeconomic status the part II, involved the using scale to measure students' beliefs towards of substance use.

Results: Demonstrated that the results of study the mean ± SD age of the study group and control group was (23.37±2.09) and (23.70 ± 2.04) respectively. In addition, there was an increase in the value of the (perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, cues to action, self-efficacy, motivation, behavioral control and intensions) over time, and there was decrease in the value of perceived barriers over time

Conclusion: This study concluded that the intervention highly perceived susceptibility in preventing students beliefs at control and motivate to adopt habits of preventive addiction and perceived benefits are the very important structural features of the Health Belief Model and that understanding and it appears that instructional preparation should be given and carried out on the basis of behavioral change models such as HBM to prevent high-risk behaviors in study group.

Keywords: Health Belief Model, preventive behaviors, Addiction