Abstract:
Osteoporosis refers to a ‘silent’ systemic skeletal disease characterized with low bone mineral density (BMD), micro-architecture bone deterioration, and increased bone fragility. The disease has serious consequences on individuals, health system, and society. These include high treatment cost and poor health outcomes. The main objective for his study was to determine the knowledge, health beliefs, and attitudes towards osteoporosis among women aged 18-52 years attending Maternal Child Health (MCH) Clinics at Thika level V and Gatundu level IV hospitals. A crosssectional study design was conducted between June 2017 and February 2018 using interviewer administered questionnaire with five sections of standardized questions. Statistical package for Social Sciences software package (SPSS) Version 20 was used to analyze data. Significant level was set at P <0.05. The mean age of participants was 28.5 years. The most common age groups at both hospitals were 18-22 years (n=118, 27.6%) and 23-27 years (n=114, 26.6%). Most participants (n=268, 62.6%) had basic education versus higher education (n= 151, 35.2 %). Majority of the participants were urban dwellers 163 (38.2%), then peri-urban 134 (31.3%), and rural 131 (30.6%). Women’s attitudes towards osteoporosis were good with a mean score of 15.1± 3.9 out of 20. Age was associated with osteoporosis attitudes (p = 0.002) unlike education (p=0.823). The mean knowledge score on the OKT was 5 out of 10. There was significant association between osteoporosis knowledge with family history of osteoporosis (p = 0.004), milk as source of calcium (p < 0.001), osteoporosis risk in men than women (p = 0.004), menopause onset (p = 0.011), and effectiveness of osteoporosis treatment in Kenya (p = 0.009) unlike other risk factors. Health beliefs were moderately strong with an average score of 76.9± 0.4 out of 110 on modified osteoporosis health belief scale (m-OHBS). The OHBS was significantly associated with age (p = 0.002) unlike education level (p = 0.736). Overall, there was a high rating for cues to action, perceived benefits, and self-efficacy, and low rating for perceived barriers, perceived susceptibility, and seriousness among the women. There were moderately strong and significant correlations between osteoporosis health belief and self-efficacy (rho = 0.5789, p < 0.001), health belief and attitude (rho = 0.5364, p < 0.001), and self-efficacy and attitude towards osteoporosis (rho = 0.5935, p < 0.001). However, osteoporosis knowledge was weakly correlated with self-efficacy (rho = 0.1376, p = 0.026) and attitude towards osteoporosis (rho = 0.2038, p = 0.0001). This study recommends health education programs to raise knowledge level on osteoporosis, its risks, and consequences in order to increase the health beliefs and even attitudes, and self-efficacy among the women and the general public in order to promote healthy behaviors for osteoporosis prevention.
