comparison of health promoting lifestyle in guilan medical and non-medical sciences students

Background: since health-promoting lifestyle is an important determinant of health status, this study aimed to compare the healthpromoting lifestyle in medical and non-medical students of guilan, iran. methods: this is a cross-sectional study with a descriptive-analytical approach that was performed on 1319 students of medical sciences and non-medical sciences in guilan, 2014. the data collection tool was 52-item hplp π in six dimensions (health responsibility, physical activity, nutritional habits, stress management, spiritual growth, and interpersonal relationships). data was analyzed using one-way anova, t-test, and kruskal–wallis test. results: the mean health-promoting lifestyle among students of guilan university and guilan university of medical sciences was (129.5± 7.17) and (128.1± 19), respectively. there was a significant difference between the two studied population in terms of health responsibility (p= 0.0001). students of medical sciences had 3.2 times more favorable health promoting lifestyle (or = 3.123, 95% ci = 1.57-6.3), married students 6.1 times (or= 1.55, 95% ci = 1.05- 2.32), students with mothers with under diploma degree 2.6 times (or= 2.6 95% ci = 1.49-4.62), students with fathers with diploma 1.7 times (or = 1.7, 95% ci = 1.2-2.56), and physical education and sports science students 5.8 times (or = 8.5, 95% ci = 3.42- 20.95) had a more optimal health promoting lifestyle. conclusion: in the present study, students' health-promoting lifestyles are in an unfavorable condition. since the students in the future will be responsible for managing different sectors of the country and will play a role in changing the other health-promoting behavior of other strata of the society, it is important to consider their health-promoting lifestyles by providing facilities and eliminating the shortcomings.