WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Stanley Tom Asaku*, Juliet Kiguli and Judith Agaba Kiiza

ABSTRACT

Despite public health benefits that researchers attribute to multiple preventive health behaviours, more remains unknown than known about how to optimize multiple preventive health behaviour change to mitigate health risks associated with noncommunicable diseases, which currently present major public health concerns, and represent the greatest global health security threats in the future. Yet, uptake and adoption of multiple preventive health behaviours continues to be unpredictable, which calls for replication of empirical studies on the attributed perceived barriers and facilitators, in view of increasing acceptability. We conducted a cross-sectional study on a random sample of 381 undergraduate female students at Makerere University in Uganda, to identify perceptions of barriers and facilitators to adoption of multiple preventive health behaviours against noncommunicable diseases. Respondents were categorized as Doers (practicing all the three desired actions) as opposed to Non-Doers (none or less than three of the actions). Data from the self-administered structured questionnaires were subjected to Chi-Square statistical test of significance. And, supplemented with six focus group interviews. Results suggest that two perceived barriers were statistically significant: ‘‘my boyfriend or spouse just doesn't give me the safe space I need to try something by my own (p= .002), and ‘‘my religious affiliation prohibits me from participating in some health-promoting activities (p= .045)’’. These results suggest that Non-Doers were likely not to adopt multiple preventive health behaviours than Doers, as a result of relationships and religion related perceived barriers. Moreover, another relationship related barrier ‘‘my friends and peers just don't give me the safe space I need to try something by my own (p= .083)’’ was close to being statistically significant. The focus groups helped to explain some of these findings. The study contributes to body of knowledge on multiple health behaviors and the emerging concept of healthy Universities, and recommends that future health promotions and messaging should adopt gender transformative approaches that engage both female and male students, and take advantage of religious places of worship and leaders to channel change messages. These results have policy implications towards achieving a healthy university and the World Health Organization’s Global action plan for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.

[Full Text Article] [Download Certificate]