Introduction:
 In Saudi Arabia, reduction of risk factors for non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, is emphasised in the Saudi National Vision 2030 – “Living healthy, being healthy” [1]. Health professionals play a particularly important role in encouraging diabetes prevention behaviours, offering behavioural support and acting as role-models for healthy lifestyles in the communities they serve. 
As part of a wider exploration of the subject in medical students, we present a novel systematic review of published studies that report the personal knowledge, beliefs and behaviours of health professional students in Saudi Arabia, and that identify influencing factors. 

Methodology:
 We searched the major bibliographic databases to identify primary studies published in English up to February 2017. The process of selecting and including relevant studies for the review accords with the PRISMA guidelines [2]. Two reviewers (RA & FA) reviewed the selected papers independently according to Hawker guidelines [3]. The identified papers had been classified into two categories;1) studies assessing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. 2) factors influencing health professional behaviours.

Results:
The flow diagram shows the search process (Figure 1). The final included studies were classified into six categories: Smoking (16 studies), Physical Inactivity and Nutrition (9 studies), Mental Health (7 studies), Chronic Disease (11), Risky Behaviours (6 studies), and Oral Health (one study). The analysis shows that health professional students tended to have low to moderate knowledge related to public health problems, positive attitudes toward preventing these problems, but a higher propensity to adopt unhealthy behaviours than might be expected of them. The most common factors influencing unhealthy behaviours included peer pressure, stress, time limitation and a busy study schedule, availability and accessibility to healthy foods and sport clubs. Health awareness, intentions to promote health and religious beliefs are the most common reasons for adopting healthy lifestyles, (Figure 2).

Conclusion:
This is the first review of Saudi evidence on knowledge, beliefs and behaviours of health professional students beside the personal and environmental influencing factors. Although this review is exploratory in nature, it helps to support the available theories which suggest that being a health professional is not associated with better health knowledge nor living a more healthy lifestyle. 
References:
1 Vision 2030 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 2016; Available from: http://www.vision2030.gov.sa/.
2 Moher, D., et al., Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS med, 2009. 6(7): p. e1000097.
3 Hawker, S., et al., Appraising the evidence: reviewing disparate data systematically. Qualitative health research, 2002. 12(9): p. 1284-1299.

Health professionals students’ knowledge, beliefs and behaviours toward public health issues in Saudi Arabia