The research team, led by Grace Taiwo Otitoju and colleagues at institutions including Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso, recruited participants through purposive, community-based sampling. Flyers with QR codes linking to an enrollment form were distributed across the University of Texas at El Paso campus and at community sites including food pantries, health fairs, and libraries. Of 55 people who registered online, 27 attended a session between July and September 2025. Eight sessions were held over Zoom, seven in English and one in Spanish, each lasting roughly 60 to 90 minutes. Sessions with three or more participants were treated as focus group discussions, while two-person sessions were analyzed as dyadic discussions within the same dataset. Participants kept their cameras off for anonymity and were identified only by pre-assigned numbers, with a virtual raise-hand feature used to manage turn-taking.

The demographic profile of the sample reflects the community it represents. Participants had a mean age of 22.5 years, and nearly 60 percent were female. A striking 81.5 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, 80 percent were born in the United States, and participants had lived in the country for an average of nearly 20 years. Household incomes clustered in the $20,001 to $50,000 range for just over half the group, and nearly half had completed some college or a vocational degree. Self-rated health was generally positive, with more than 80 percent describing their health as good, very good, or excellent. The researchers transcribed each session, verified the transcripts against recordings, and analyzed them thematically, beginning with open coding and a codebook informed by the health belief model’s six constructs: perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy. Inductive coding allowed themes outside the model to surface.

The first major theme concerned general awareness and perception of vaccines, and here the picture was broadly favorable. Many participants framed vaccines as essential preventive tools that build immunity against serious illness, with some noting that rising disease levels made vaccination feel newly urgent. Yet perceptions were not formed in a vacuum. Participants repeatedly described vaccination as a social expectation embedded in childhood memory, school enrollment requirements, and family norms. One participant recalled that everyone had to be vaccinated to enroll in school, while another said her family always made sure the children received vaccines for everything. Institutional requirements, from high school health programs mandating tuberculosis and HPV shots to employers requiring full vaccination, functioned as powerful external drivers of uptake. At the same time, cultural conservatism within some families shaped attitudes toward specific vaccines, with one participant observing that some people believe the HPV vaccine encourages sexual activity, a concern documented in prior research on Latino communities.

The second theme mapped directly onto the health belief model’s barrier construct: cost, access, and scheduling. Participants described financial cost as a significant obstacle, and clinics that were far out of the way led some to cancel appointments altogether. Long work hours and competing responsibilities further limited attendance at both vaccination appointments and educational sessions. These structural barriers interacted with psychological ones. Concerns about side effects, particularly of COVID-19 vaccines, were prominent, with participants citing worries about long-term effects and the relative newness of the vaccines. Personal anecdotes carried considerable weight: one participant described a mother who became seriously ill after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, an experience that fostered a cautious attitude. Such stories illustrate how individual risk perception, a core health belief model construct, is often shaped not by clinical data but by lived experience within families.

Motivations for vaccination, by contrast, were strongly communal. Participants emphasized protecting themselves and others, with several describing vaccination as a way to safeguard immunocompromised loved ones and the broader community. One participant stated a belief in protecting the community by protecting oneself, a framing that extends beyond individual benefit into social responsibility. Within the health belief model, these motivations align with perceived benefits, while school and workplace mandates operate as cues to action. But the researchers argue that community-oriented motivation suggests vaccine communication in this setting should attend to collective responsibility, not merely personal risk calculus. This finding is particularly relevant for a border community where family networks are dense and intergenerational influence is strong, and it hints at messaging strategies that emphasize protecting others rather than only oneself.

Social media emerged as a double-edged sword, and perhaps the most consequential theme for future intervention design. Participants reported frequent encounters with vaccine misinformation and disinformation online, including false claims that vaccines cause autism or kill people, and they expressed frustration that celebrities with large platforms spread such content. Yet some participants described active verification habits, checking claims with their doctors or refusing to take online posts at face value, while acknowledging that many people accept what they see without scrutiny. Notably, the same platforms that carry misinformation, Instagram and TikTok, were identified as the preferred channels for reaching young adults, with engaging formats like memes and funny videos seen as attention-grabbing. The researchers are careful to distinguish preference from credibility: reach does not guarantee trust, and effective peer advocacy should not simply reproduce vaccine messages on popular platforms but must anchor them to credible information from healthcare professionals.

Peer influence itself proved mixed but meaningful. Participants described peer experiences as often the first point of contact for vaccine information, and said that a friend’s good experience with vaccination would encourage them to get vaccinated. Peers were seen as most persuasive when they were relatable or medically knowledgeable. This finding underpins the study’s central practical goal: informing a peer advocacy education curriculum that prepares teens and young adults to promote vaccine confidence in their own networks. Encouragingly, participants expressed substantial willingness to participate in peer-led advocacy, particularly when initiatives were accessible, incentivized, and supported by relatable peers and health professionals. They favored interactive formats such as campus events with food, free vaccine tables at health fairs, and one-on-one conversations that allow people to ask questions without embarrassment. One participant captured the underlying logic succinctly: people are more inclined to listen to those they have things in common with.

Interest in advocacy training was similarly strong, with clear preferences for format. Participants wanted short, hands-on, visually engaging sessions, suggesting time limits ranging from 30 minutes to an hour, and requesting practical tools such as charts of vaccine schedules by age, interactive activities, humor, and the presence of a health professional to answer questions. Scheduling flexibility was flagged as essential, since long work hours were a barrier to attendance, and participants recommended multiple sessions to accommodate different routines. These preferences will shape a proposed curriculum emphasizing 30-to-45-minute modules, visual and role-play activities, bilingual delivery in English and Spanish, digital information literacy training, strategies for responding to common vaccine myths, and culturally sensitive communication with family and peers. The researchers stress that these components remain proposals that must be evaluated in subsequent implementation research before any conclusions about effectiveness can be drawn.

The study’s limitations are acknowledged candidly. The sample was small and drawn from a single county, some sessions included only two participants because registered individuals failed to attend, and recruitment through QR-code flyers at university and community settings may have attracted a self-selected group already inclined toward health engagement. Most sessions were conducted in English despite the bilingual context of the border region. The researchers describe their findings as evidence of thematic adequacy rather than claiming full saturation within each focus group, and they caution that expressed willingness to advocate does not prove that young adults across the broader community would sustain participation. Still, the formative value is considerable. The study demonstrates that the health belief model remains a useful lens for interpreting perceived benefits, barriers, risk appraisal, and cues to action, but that family expectations, peer dynamics, and social media ecosystems must be built into any intervention from the start. In a community where vaccination generates billions of dollars in net economic benefit nationally yet hesitancy persists, equipping trusted young voices with accurate information, professional backup, and practical communication skills may be one of the most promising paths forward.

Subject of Research: Vaccine perceptions, barriers, and peer advocacy among young adults in an underserved US-Mexico border community

Article Title: Applying the health belief model to understand vaccine perceptions, barriers, and motivators and peer influence in an underserved community: A qualitative study

Article References: Otitoju, G. T., Hernandez, A., Sudanagunta, S., Sanchez, K., Dadha, P., & Molokwu, J. (2026). Applying the health belief model to understand vaccine perceptions, barriers, and motivators and peer influence in an underserved community: A qualitative study. Public Health in Practice, 12, Article 100864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhip.2026.100864

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.puhip.2026.100864

Keywords: vaccine hesitancy, health belief model, peer advocacy, El Paso, young adults, qualitative research, Hispanic community, social media misinformation, HPV vaccine, COVID-19 vaccines, public health, US-Mexico border

At the center of the study is a proposed theoretical model the authors call EHBTAUT, which fuses three established pillars of behavioral science into a single architecture. The first is the eHealth context itself, encompassing how people orient themselves toward health information online. The second is the Health Belief Model, a classic framework that explains health behavior through perceptions of susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers. The third is the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2, or UTAUT2, which captures how performance expectations, effort expectations, social influence, hedonic motivation, and habit shape whether people adopt a given technology. By weaving these together, the model allows the researchers to test, in a single integrated structure, how health beliefs and technology acceptance forces interact to produce actual behavioral intention and real utilization of eHealth services.

The empirical backbone of the work is substantial. The team collected two rounds of primary questionnaire data from young adults between the ages of 18 and 30, ultimately yielding 1,432 valid responses. Participants were assessed on a battery of constructs including health information orientation, online health behavior, eHealth literacy, social interaction needs, internet self-efficacy, and patterns of internet and social media use. The choice of age group was deliberate: young adults are the most digitally fluent generation, and if eHealth platforms are failing to capture them, the problem lies not in access to technology but in how these platforms are designed and communicated. Previous work by some of the same authors had already suggested that social media serves as a key gateway to health information for 18-to-30-year-old college students, making this cohort an ideal proving ground for testing a model of digital health engagement.

Methodologically, the study goes beyond the standard partial least squares structural equation modeling that dominates information systems research. The authors combined PLS-SEM with a probabilistic neural network, a hybrid approach the team labels PLS-PNN. Structural equation modeling identifies the strength and significance of the pathways connecting constructs, while the probabilistic neural network, a technique first formalized by Donald Specht in 1990, captures nonlinear classification patterns in the data that linear path models can miss. This combination reflects a growing movement in business research toward pairing interpretable statistical models with machine learning algorithms to boost predictive accuracy without sacrificing theoretical insight. To guard against fragile findings, the researchers supplemented their analysis with Monte Carlo simulation, repeatedly resampling and perturbing the data to confirm that the estimated relationships remained stable under uncertainty rather than emerging as artifacts of a single dataset.

The findings converge on a clear message: the desire for social interaction and the orientation toward health information are not peripheral factors but central engines of eHealth adoption. Health information-seeking motivations and internet-based information exchange, the study concludes, significantly shape healthcare information design. In practical terms, this means that a platform’s functionality must align with what its target audience actually expects and needs. A young adult who turns to Instagram or TikTok for health content does so partly for information and partly for the social texture surrounding it: comments, shares, peer validation, and community. An eHealth application that ignores this social dimension, offering only a sterile transactional interface, is fighting against the very motivations that bring people online in the first place. Conversely, platforms that weave in interaction opportunities can convert passive browsers into active users.

The study also gives weight to constructs that many commercial health apps undervalue. Internet self-efficacy, the confidence a person feels in their ability to navigate online environments, emerged as a meaningful contributor to acceptance, echoing earlier findings from online education research where interaction and self-efficacy predicted satisfaction. eHealth literacy, the capacity to find, appraise, and apply health information from electronic sources, similarly conditions whether digital health content translates into health action. These findings carry a pointed implication for health equity: populations with lower digital confidence or lower eHealth literacy may be systematically excluded from the benefits of digital health unless platforms are deliberately designed to lower those barriers, through simpler interfaces, clearer guidance, and built-in support.

What distinguishes this research from most survey-based studies is its final phase: an application-oriented demonstration. Rather than leaving the empirically supported mechanisms on paper, the team translated them into an iOS-based eHealth application and evaluated its practical relevance with 90 young adult participants. This design-to-validation loop is rare in information systems scholarship and gives the findings a concrete product dimension. It demonstrates that constructs measured in a questionnaire can be operationalized as design features, such as social interaction affordances and information architecture calibrated to user information needs, and that the resulting application resonates with the intended audience. For healthcare providers and technology firms, this offers a template for evidence-based product development in the digital health space.

The broader stakes are considerable. The eHealth market, spanning telemedicine, health information systems, mobile health, and e-pharmacy, has been projected to grow dramatically through 2030, and healthcare systems worldwide face chronic pressure on resources. The study’s framing of eHealth communication as a lever for the efficient utilization of healthcare resources highlights the practical payoff: when patients use digital tools effectively, they can make better-informed decisions, reduce unnecessary visits, and engage in preventive behavior, easing strain on overloaded systems. At the same time, the research implicitly acknowledges the darker currents of the online health ecosystem, including the infodemic of health misinformation that surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and the privacy concerns that shape acceptance of smart health technologies. Building platforms around verified information needs and genuine social interaction may be one of the most effective counters to misinformation, since trusted, well-designed channels can crowd out less reliable sources.

For the designers of the next generation of health applications, the study’s recipe is deceptively simple: start with the user’s information orientation and social needs, build confidence through ease of use and literacy support, and let health beliefs and technology acceptance theory guide the messaging. The researchers, whose work was approved by an Institutional Review Board and who report no competing financial interests, have made their data and materials available from the corresponding author upon request. As healthcare continues its migration to screens of every size, this research offers both a diagnostic of why adoption has lagged among the most connected generation and a validated blueprint for closing the gap between the digital health systems institutions build and the digital health behaviors people actually practice.

Subject of Research: Factors driving eHealth adoption and communication effectiveness among young adults

Article Title: Toward Effective eHealth Communication for Efficient Utilization of Healthcare Resources: A Social Interaction and Information Needs Perspective

Article References: Wang, Y., Prybutok, G., Gulzari, A., Peng, X., Prybutok, V., Lu, Y., & Cheng, F. (2026). Toward Effective eHealth Communication for Efficient Utilization of Healthcare Resources: A Social Interaction and Information Needs Perspective. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-026-10819-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-026-10819-y

Keywords: eHealth, health communication, UTAUT2, Health Belief Model, eHealth literacy, social interaction, internet self-efficacy, PLS-SEM, probabilistic neural network, Monte Carlo simulation, healthcare platforms, young adults

The study, led by Chiara de Waure of the University of Perugia and colleagues spanning institutions in Perugia, Rome, Palermo and Catania, drew its participants from the INNOPREV randomized controlled trial, a project funded by the Italian Ministry of Health under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The trial, registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT05883878, is designed to test innovative, personalized strategies for cardiovascular disease prevention in high-risk adults. Before any randomization took place, the researchers asked participants aged 40 to 69 a deceptively simple question: how much do you believe cardiovascular disease threatens you personally? The answer came through a validated instrument called the Health Beliefs Related to Cardiovascular Disease Scale, or HBCVD, a 25-item questionnaire built on the Health Belief Model, one of the most influential psychological frameworks in preventive medicine.

The Health Belief Model holds that whether people adopt protective behaviors depends on four interconnected perceptions: their susceptibility to a condition, the severity it would have if it struck, the benefits of taking preventive action, and the barriers standing in the way of that action. The HBCVD scale translates these constructs into four subscales, each scored out of 100. When the researchers analyzed the 988 returned questionnaires from the 1,019 enrolled participants, they found a mean overall score of 61.10, with a standard deviation of 6.61. In other words, on average these adults, all of whom had been clinically assessed as being at moderate-to-high cardiovascular risk, perceived their risk as barely more than moderate.

To understand what shaped these perceptions, the team compared HBCVD scores across a battery of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, including sex, age, marital status, education, employment, smoking status, body mass index, family history of cardiovascular conditions, the SCORE2 risk algorithm, and Life’s Essential 8, the American Heart Association’s composite measure of cardiovascular health covering diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep, body weight, blood lipids, blood glucose and blood pressure. Because the analysis involved many simultaneous comparisons, the researchers applied the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to control the false discovery rate, a statistical safeguard that reduces the risk of spurious findings when testing many hypotheses at once. Effect sizes were reported as rank-biserial correlations or epsilon-squared values, allowing readers to judge not just statistical significance but practical magnitude.

After this correction, two factors stood out as consistently associated with overall risk perception: body mass index category and Life’s Essential 8 score. Participants with higher BMI perceived greater risk, an association confirmed in multivariable linear regression models fitted with heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors. Compared with participants of normal weight, those who were overweight scored 1.13 points higher on the overall HBCVD scale, while those with obesity scored 2.94 points higher, the latter difference highly statistically significant. The direction makes intuitive sense: people carrying excess weight may receive more frequent warnings from clinicians, or may themselves sense the physical burden, and this awareness translates into stronger perceived vulnerability.

The association with cardiovascular health ran in the opposite direction, and this is where the findings become genuinely thought-provoking. Participants with moderate cardiovascular health scored 2.63 points lower on risk perception than those with low cardiovascular health, and those with high cardiovascular health scored 3.80 points lower. On the surface this seems logical, since healthier people genuinely face lower risk. But the effect sizes were small, and the pattern raises a subtle concern for prevention science: people who already behave well may feel insulated from cardiovascular disease, and that sense of safety could erode their motivation to maintain healthy habits over the long term. Prevention programs that ignore this psychological dynamic risk losing participants precisely when those habits have begun to pay off.

When the researchers dissected the four subscales separately, each told a different story. Perceived susceptibility showed the strongest and most consistent relationships with objective risk factors, tracking closely with BMI, family history, and Life’s Essential 8 score. Perceived benefits, by contrast, varied mainly with socio-demographic characteristics, suggesting that beliefs about the value of prevention are shaped more by social context than by clinical status. Perceived barriers were linked both to education level and to cardiovascular health, hinting that people with less education may face more practical obstacles to preventive action, and that even health-conscious individuals encounter friction in sustaining it. Perceived severity differed significantly only by sex and age class, indicating that judgments about how bad a cardiovascular event would be are relatively uniform across the population, anchored more in personal demographics than in medical risk profiles.

The methodological choices in the study deserve attention. Because all variables were measured at a single pre-randomization time point, the authors are careful to note that no causal inference is possible; the analysis shows associations, not mechanisms. The cross-sectional design means that, for example, obesity might drive higher risk perception, or conversely that anxious people might gain weight, or that both could reflect some third factor. Yet even as a snapshot, the data are valuable precisely because they come from a trial population that was thoroughly phenotyped, with clinically validated risk scores and standardized health assessments, rather than from a self-selected survey sample. The modest effect sizes, with epsilon-squared values around 0.02, underscore that risk perception is a diffuse phenomenon shaped by many small influences rather than one dominant driver.

Why does all this matter? Because risk perception is the psychological gateway to prevention. Clinical guidelines can calculate a person’s ten-year cardiovascular risk to several decimal places, but that calculation changes nothing unless the person believes it applies to them. The concept of unrealistic optimism, well documented in health psychology, describes people’s tendency to believe their own risk is lower than that of their peers, and the moderate scores observed here, in a population selected specifically for elevated risk, are consistent with that bias. If the very people flagged by SCORE2 as needing intervention do not feel vulnerable, adherence to medications, lifestyle counseling and follow-up appointments may all suffer. The INNOPREV findings give clinicians and public health planners a map of where those perception gaps concentrate.

The authors argue that their results can support the development of tailored preventive strategies to enhance risk awareness and promote healthy behaviors, and the trial’s randomized phase will test exactly that idea. In an era when personalized prevention is moving from slogan to policy, this study is a reminder that personalization must begin with the mind as well as the body. A prevention program calibrated to a person’s cholesterol but not to their beliefs is working with half the information. As Italy and other countries grapple with the enormous burden of cardiovascular disease, the quiet insight from this analysis may prove to be among the most actionable: before we can persuade people to protect their hearts, we first have to convince them their hearts are worth protecting, and that task starts with understanding how they currently see the risk.

Subject of Research: Cardiovascular risk perception among Italian adults at moderate-to-high cardiovascular risk enrolled in the INNOPREV prevention trial

Article Title: Perceived risk of cardiovascular diseases in the Italian population: a baseline cross-sectional analysis of participants enrolled in the INNOPREV trial

Article References: de Waure, C., Valentini, I., Arcelli, M., Volpi, F., Scarsi, N., Gobbetti, C., Lolli, O., Russo, L., Proto, L., Galarducci, R., Pasciuto, T., Severino, A., Tuttolomondo, A., De Bella, D., Daidone, M., Morello, G., Muli, R. L., Previti, A., Pieri, A., … Boccia, S. (2026). Perceived risk of cardiovascular diseases in the Italian population: a baseline cross-sectional analysis of participants enrolled in the INNOPREV trial. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29286-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29286-w

Keywords: cardiovascular disease, risk perception, INNOPREV trial, Health Belief Model, HBCVD scale, Life's Essential 8, body mass index, SCORE2, preventive behaviours, Italy, public health, BMC Public Health

Menstrual cups are bell-shaped devices, typically made of medical-grade silicone, that are inserted into the vagina to collect rather than absorb menstrual blood. A single cup can be worn for up to twelve hours, then emptied, cleaned and reinserted, and with proper care a cup can last for as long as a decade. Compared with disposable pads and tampons, the economics are striking. One systematic review cited in the study calculated that if a woman used twelve pads per cycle, switching to a cup would represent roughly 0.4 percent of the waste and 5 percent of the cost; against twelve tampons per cycle, the cup would account for about 7 percent of the cost and 6 percent of the plastic waste. Research in Gujarat found that the average annual cost of sanitary pads is roughly twenty times that of a menstrual cup. Yet despite these advantages, usage among reproductive-age women in India has been reported at only around 5 percent.

The research team, led by Melisa Rudolph Menezes of Manipal Health Enterprises Limited, together with Swathi K S and Brayal D Souza of the Prasanna School of Public Health at Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Pallavi Upadhyaya of T A Pai Management Institute, grounded their investigation in three established behavioural frameworks: the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Technology Acceptance Model and the Health Belief Model. This integrated approach allowed them to capture social influence, usability perceptions and health-related beliefs within a single model. The Theory of Planned Behaviour contributes the roles of attitude and subjective norms; the Technology Acceptance Model contributes perceived ease of use; and the Health Belief Model contributes safety perceptions, cost considerations and awareness as a cue to action. Because menstrual cups are inserted rather than worn externally, the researchers also hypothesised that safety perception would mediate the relationship between attitude and behavioural intention.

Data were collected through a cross-sectional online survey distributed via Google Forms and social media platforms, with voluntary participation and informed consent. The questionnaire contained 28 items measuring seven constructs: awareness, perceived ease of use, price value, attitude, safety perception, subjective norms and behavioural intention, all rated on five-point Likert scales. A priori power analysis using G*Power indicated a minimum sample of 103 for a medium effect size, so the achieved sample of 282 was comfortably adequate. Analyses were performed in SPSS for descriptive statistics and SmartPLS version 4 for structural equation modelling, following a two-step procedure that first validated the measurement model and then tested the structural paths.

The measurement model passed standard checks. Outer loadings exceeded the 0.7 threshold, Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability met internal consistency criteria, average variance extracted surpassed 0.5 for convergent validity, and all heterotrait-monotrait ratios fell below 0.90, confirming discriminant validity. Variance inflation factors were all below 5, ruling out problematic multicollinearity. Most respondents were aged 18 to 30, about 91 percent had education at or above the 12th-standard level, roughly 30 percent were employed, and 73.4 percent were single, reflecting a largely young, educated, digitally connected sample.

The structural model delivered clear and statistically significant findings. Awareness, perceived ease of use and price value all significantly shaped attitudes towards menstrual cups, with price value showing the strongest path coefficient into attitude at 0.312. In turn, attitude, safety perception and subjective norms all significantly predicted behavioural intention. The coefficient of determination for behavioural intention was 0.424, indicating moderate predictive validity. Most strikingly, safety perception carried the highest path coefficient of any construct at 0.411, making it the single most powerful driver of intention in the model. All seven hypotheses were supported at the 5 percent significance level.

The mediation analysis added a crucial nuance. Without safety perception in the model, the direct effect of attitude on intention was 0.505; with the mediator included, it dropped to 0.246, an absorption of 0.259. The indirect effect through safety perception was 0.2558, and the variance accounted for statistic came to 0.5097, falling within the 20 to 80 percent range that indicates partial mediation. In practical terms, this means that even women who hold favourable attitudes towards menstrual cups may hesitate to adopt them unless they also believe the product is safe for their bodies. Safety beliefs about hygiene, insertion, sterilisation and leakage act as a cognitive filter through which positive attitudes must pass before converting into intention.

These findings align with, and help reconcile, a mixed international literature. Studies in Taiwan using the Theory of Planned Behaviour found attitude to be the largest predictor of cup intention, while research in the Philippines reported that subjective norms did not significantly influence intention, and work in Nepal suggested that positive peer exposure could increase adoption. The Indian results suggest that in a context where menstruation remains stigmatised and misconceptions about internal products persist, social endorsement matters, but it cannot fully override personal safety and comfort concerns. Prior Indian studies have reported that more than 80 percent of women in some populations are aware of menstrual cups and nearly half would be willing to try one if available, yet actual use remains low, evidence that knowledge alone is insufficient to change behaviour.

The authors argue that their results point to targeted, actionable interventions rather than generic promotion. To address safety perceptions and ease of use, policymakers and marketers could develop instructional workshops and video demonstrations on proper cup use and hygiene. Given the influence of subjective norms, peer-led campaigns and community ambassadors could normalise the product, while digital campaigns on popular social media platforms highlighting health benefits and cost-effectiveness could raise awareness. The study is not without limitations: its cross-sectional design cannot establish causality, convenience sampling through online channels may introduce self-selection bias and limit generalisability to women with less internet access or digital literacy, and measured intentions may not translate into actual behaviour where product availability, peer influence or personal comfort intervene. Even so, the research provides public health experts, policymakers and marketers with an evidence-based map of the psychological levers, above all safety, that must be pulled to make sustainable menstrual health choices genuinely accessible in India.

Subject of Research: Behavioral intentions of Indian women to adopt menstrual cups as sustainable menstrual hygiene products

Article Title: Shifting Preferences: Assessing Women’s Behavioral Intentions to Adopt Menstrual Cups

Article References: Menezes, M. R., K S, S., Upadhyaya, P., & Souza, B. D. (2026). Shifting Preferences: Assessing Women’s Behavioral Intentions to Adopt Menstrual Cups. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-026-00533-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-026-00533-8

Keywords: menstrual cups, menstrual hygiene management, behavioral intentions, Theory of Planned Behaviour, Technology Acceptance Model, Health Belief Model, safety perception, PLS-SEM, India, sustainable menstrual products, consumer behavior, women's health