Assessing Barriers To Therapeutic Regimens For Young People With Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

The Health Belief Model (HBM) has been one of the most widely used theories in health behavior research over the past 5 decades1,2. Originally developed in the early 1950s to understand why people failed to take advantage of preventive health services (such as hypertension screening), the HBM was later extended to adherence to prescribed medical regimens3,4.The HBM posits 5 major sets of variables that predict or explain adherence: (1) perceived susceptibility (including the person’s perceived risk of contracting or re-contracting a condition or acceptance of an existing condition); (2) perceived severity (the person’s evaluation of the medical and social consequences of contracting an illness or not receiving treatment); (3) perceived benefits (the person’s judgment of the perceived benefits of taking a particular health action); (4) perceived barriers (the person’s perception of impediments to adhere to recommended treatments, … Address correspondence to Dr. M.A. Rapoff, 3901 Rainbow Blvd., Kansas City, Kansas 66103-7330, USA. E-mail: mrapoff{at}kumc.edu