Barriers to and facilitators of older adult’s adherence to health recommendations: Towards an EngAging two-way health communication

Non-adherence to health recommendations (e.g. medical prescriptions) presents potential costs for healthcare, which could be prevented or mitigated. This is often attributed to a person’s rational choice, to not adhere. However, this may also be determined by individual and contextual factors implied in the recommendations communication process. In accordance, this chapter focuses specifically on barriers to and facilitators of adherence to recommendations and engagement with the healthcare process, particularly concerning the communication between health professionals and patients. For this, the authors present examples of engagement increment through different degrees of participation, from a one-way/directive towards a two-way/engaging communication process. This focuses specifically on a vulnerable population group with increasing healthcare needs: older adults. Future possibilities for two-way engaging communications are discussed, aimed at promoting increased adherence to health recommendations and people’s self-regulation of their own health.

VALIDATION STUDY OF HEALTH BELIEFS SCALE

Introduction: The Health Belief Scale is a questionnaire used to assess a wide range of beliefs related to health. The objective of this study was to undertake construction and culturally adapt the Health Belief Scale (HBS) to the Portuguese language and to test its reliability and validity. Methods: This new version was obtained with forward/backward translations, consensus panels and a pre-test, having been inspired by some of the items from “Canada’s Health Promotion Survey” and the “European Health and Behaviour Survey”, with the inclusion of new items about food-related beliefs. The Portuguese version of Health Belief Scale and a form for the characteristics of the participants were applied to 849 Portuguese adolescents. Results: Reliability was good with a Cronbach’s alpha coeficient of 0.867, and an intraclass correlation coeficient (ICC) of 0.95. Corrected item-total coeficients ranged from 0.301 to 0.620 and weighted kappa coeficients ranged from 0.72 to 0.93 for the total scale items. We obtained a scale composed of 13 items divided into ive factors (smoking and alcohol belief, food belief, sexual belief, physical and sporting belief, and social belief), which explain 57.97% of the total variance. Conclusions: The scale exhibited suitable psychometric properties, in terms of internal consistency, reproducibility and construct validity. It can be used in various areas of research.