Assessment of Health-Promoting Lifestyle in Medical Students of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2014

Background: health-promoting lifestyle is one of the determination criteria for health factors and the prevention of health-threatening factors. according to the available statistics, 53% of deaths are related to lifestyle. the aim of this study was to evaluate health-promoting lifestyles in medical students of rafsanjan university of medical sciences (rums), rafsanjan, iran. materials and methods: this was a descriptive study conducted in 2014 on 262 volunteer medical students. to collect data, a demographic information questionnaire and the health-promoting lifestyle profile ii (hplp-ii) were used. minimum and maximum scores of hplp-ii were 48 and 192, respectively. data analysis was conducted using t-test, one-way anova, tukey's multiple comparison test, and non-parametric kruskal-wallis test. results: in this study, 58.8% of the participants were women. the mean age of the participants was 22.50 ± 2.16 years. the mean and standard deviation of the hplp-ii score of the medical students was 109.74 ± 18.65. there was a significant relationship between health-promoting lifestyle and variables of age (p = 0.007), university entrance year (p < 0.001), mother’s education level (p = 0.003), and father’s education level (p = 0.011). however, no relationship was observed between health-promoting lifestyle and parental occupation and place of residence (p > 0.050). conclusions: this study showed that the status of health-promoting lifestyles in medical students of rums was at a moderate level, but it is still at a great distance to the optimal level. therefore, it is necessary to implement programs to promote a healthy lifestyle in order to maintain health in the youth until graduation.