Health promotion can be defined as empowering individuals to take control over their health, and to improve and maintain a healthy lifestyle (World Health Organization, 2011). To facilitate this process, the nurse plays an active role in health education to provide information and guidance to promote a healthier lifestyle. Traditionally, the focus of the nurse was to teach patients how to manage illness (Ganzit and Stefanini 2012). This role has now expanded to focus on health promotion and how to remain healthy. With an evidence based understanding of the effectiveness of health promotion to give people the awareness and provide knowledge to what is essential for a healthy lifestyle (Maville and Huerta 2008).
According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, Ireland is on trend to becoming the most overweight country in Europe by 2030 according to current trends. The report compared recorded figures from 2010 and stipulated growth figures to the year 2030. If this trend in Ireland continues, experts are of the opinion that by the year 2030, Ireland may have to deal with a big obesity crisis (Anon, 2016). Many factors influence body weight including genes lack of sleep, poor diet, consuming excess amounts of food and lack of physical activity. Being physical inactivate is
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The Health Belief Model (HBM) was the first theory that was exclusively related to the field of health-related behaviour’s. It is an effective framework that can be utilised when developing health education strategies, guide health promotion and the prevention of diseases programs (Gottwald and Goodman-Brown 2012). HBM key elements focus on motivating people to take positive health actions that uses the desire to avoid a negative health consequence as the prime motivation (Ottawa charter for health promotion