Background: Dietary diversity is a crucial element of inclusive care for people living with people living with HIV (PLWHIV), especially in resource-limited countries where undernutrition, food insecurity, low Intention and poor attitude towards diversified diets are the common challenges.  It is imperative to understand dietary diversity correlates and their theoretical underpinnings in order to promote health feeding habit. The aim of this study was to assess the Intention to wards dietary diversity behavior among Adult People Living with HIV in Jimma Zone Public Hospitals South west Ethiopia.

Methods: Hospital based survey was carried out in five public institutions among sampled (n=403) adult PLWHIV. The study was utilized the theory of planned behavior as a theoretical model. Data were entered into Epi-Data and exported to SPSS version 20 for analyses. Relationships among the major variables were described by correlation coefficients. Multivariable linear regression model was carried out to all the predict variables of adult PLWHIV behavioral intention to towards dietary diversity with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) at P0.05. The quantitative data was supplemented by qualitative data, which was collected through key informant interviews and analyzed thematically.

Results: A total of 403 adult PLWHIV were included in the study, making 100% response rate. The statistically significant predictors of Intention to use dietary diversity in the final model were attitude (β= 0.196, P<0.01) and subjective norm (β= 0.390, P<0.01). The constructs of TPB independently explained the variance in intention towards dietary diversity by 25.7%. All the intermediate, proximal and distal components of TPB explained the final model by 32.2% of variance in the intention to use dietary diversity.

Conclusions: The study showed that the theory of planned behavior as explaining 32.2% of variation in intentions towards using dietary diversity of PLWHIV. Therefore, If Intention is used in extending theories and designing interventions, this will increase the ability of these programs to change behavior and rather than treating malnutrition of the PLWHIV.

Key terms: Behavior, dietary diversity, Intention, Jimma Zone, PLWHIV, Hospitals, TPB