Observation of covid-19 safety protocols by persons with chronic health conditions in Ghana: The influence of health belief model

Abstract

Covid-19 has brought distortion to health delivery globally and made it challenging to seek healthcare, but persons with chronic health conditions who require continuous medical attention have suffered the most as all attention at the medical front was directed to covid-19 related issues. The study explores how the five primary constructs of the health belief model were used to drive adherence to covid-19 preventive protocols among persons with chronic health conditions in Ghana. A quantitative technique was used for data collection and analyses. SPSS version 21 and AMOS version 21 were used to analyze data. Hierarchical regression from SPSS were used to examine the influences of health belief model constructs on chronic patients' adherence to covid-19 preventive protocols. The study's finding indicates that perceived susceptibility, severity, and self-efficacy influence adherence to covid-19 protocols among persons with chronic conditions. While perceived benefits and perceived barriers though they have negative and positive influences on adherence, they were not statistically significant. Perceived self-efficacy has a negative influence on the perceived barrier and a positive influence on perceived benefit. Gender has positive influence on Perceived susceptibility.The study's outcome indicated that persons with chronic health conditions need special arrangements to ease their access to healthcare during outbreaks. Hence, public health professionals need to educate chronic patients on how to practice the covid-19 preventive protocols and support them with covid-19 preventive materials to increase their self-efficacy to adhere to covid-19 protocols.

Keywords

• Health belief model
• Chronic disease
• Covid-19
• Safety protocol
• Health care