Health Promoting Behaviors (HPBs) and the Metabolic Indicators of Red Crescent Society Employees in Iran

 Disease patterns have changed from communicable to non-communicable diseases, which are the leading causes of mortality around the globe. Health-promoting behaviors (HPBs) could be effective in the prevention of disease and the development of metabolic syndrome.

 The objectives of the current study are (1) determination of the level of the HPBs and; (2) understand the predictive role of the HPBs of the metabolic indicators in the employees of the Red Crescent Society (RCS) based in Shiraz in Iran.

 This is a descriptive and analytical study, in which all 402 employees of the RCS participated. This study used a Census method and was done in 2018. The validation of this HPBs model was confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model. Relationships between the HPBs dimensions and metabolic indicators were obtained with Pearson correlation. Data analyzed with the SPSS and Amos software.

 We found that the goodness of fit of the HPBs model was acceptable, which is indicated by the value of equal to 1.22 and the RMSEA value equal to 0.025. In addition, the standard estimated effect of physical activity on the levels of triglyceride, cholesterol, body mass index, and hypertension was significant (P < 0.01). Regarding the aspects of the HPBs, the health responsibility had a higher mean score (24.92 ± 5.23), than the other parameters. In this study, physical activity had the strongest role in the HPBs model.

 We can suggest interventions regarding lifestyle, especially physical activity to improve the employees’ health.