Promotion of breastfeeding in Thai urban women: use of the health belief model in health education.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of health education, which isprovided in antenatal, hospital and home period, on the prevalence and duration ofbreastfeeding. The modified Health Belief Model was used as the conceptualframework of the study.The study was carried out in Haad Yai hospital in Thailand. The subjectswere 223 urban women in simple randomized groups ( A, AP, APH experimentalgroups and C control group). Antenatal, postnatal education and home visits served ashealth education intervention. Only women in the experimental groups were providedwith health education intervention. Women were followed up during the period of sixmonths.Chi-square was used to determine the relationship between women'sdemographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, family structure and type offeeding intention. The differences between women's knowledge, attitude, perceivedsusceptibility and severity scores and type of feeding intention were tested by oneway analysis of variance. The Z test was applied to test the differences of the twoproportions of women breastfeeding in study groups.The results showed that women who received health education were morelikely to breastfeed and prolong breastfeeding than those who did not receive anyeducation intervention. The home visit was found to be the most influentialintervention.The results also showed that there were no relationships betweenwomen's breastfeeding knowledge, attitude to breastfeeding, their perceptions oftheir infants' susceptibility to malnutrition and diarrhoea, and the severity ofmalnutrition and diarrhoea in their infants, and their feeding method intention.However, women who received antenatal education had a greater knowledge ofbreastfeeding and a more favourable attitude to breastfeeding than those who were inthe control group. But no significant differences in the perceived susceptibility andseverity scores were found between the experimental groups and control group.It was concluded that this modified Health Belief Model can berecommended as a conceptual framework for the study of health education and for theplanning of health education intervention. However, it needs to be conducted in thewider population for the results to be generalized