Application of Models and Theories of Health Education and Health Promotion in the Prevention of Substance Abuse in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of interventions based on models and theories of health education and promotion in preventing substance abuse in adolescents.

A detailed search was performed in Magiran, SID, Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed, and Google Scholar databases using related keywords to extract all studies published in this field with the time limit of January 1, 2011 to December 21, 2021. After screening the studies, 11 articles that met the inclusion criteria were examined.

In this research, there were 7 semi-experimental studies, 3 clinical trials, and 1 unclear study, which were conducted on first- and second-grade high school students. Educational interventions were conducted in 6 articles based on the theory of planned behavior, 2 articles based on the health belief model, 1 article based on the developed theory of rational action, 1 article based on the trans theoretical model, and 1 article based on the family interaction theory.

The results showed that the use of different models/theories could have a positive effect on preventing substance abuse and subsequently performing health behaviors. Based on the findings, the structure of attitude and self-efficacy were introduced as the most important and strongest variables in most studies and played a crucial role in preventing substance abuse and health behavior in students