Health Education and Health Promotion

Aim: Recently, prevention of osteoporosis has become the goal of many health professionals. Behavior change is one of the most powerful strategies for osteoporosis prevention. This study aimed to determine calcium intake in order to identify osteoporosis preventive behavior in women aged 30-50 years in Khorramabad city, Iran. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study included 269 women aged 30-50 years who were selected from all the health centers of Khorramabad city according to the inclusion criteria of the study and by cluster and systematic sampling. The tools for data collection were valid and reliable questionnaires of demographic information, stages of change, decisional balance, self-efficacy, and calcium intake. Chi-square test and logistic regression were applied to analyze the data. Findings: The mean age of the subjects was 38.72±7.003, and the mean total calcium weekly intake was 3191.03±3869.24. The results also showed that self-efficacy among the constructs of the Trans-theoretical Model (TTM) was a significant predictive of dietary calcium intake for the behavior. Conclusion: The results showed that the weekly intake calcium in women was low. Self-efficacy among the constructs of the TTM was the only significant predictive for osteoporosis prevention behavior. Therefore, the findings of this study can be considered when designing educational interventions for prevention of osteoporosis by health authorities.

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