Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Promotion of Influenza Prevention Beliefs and Behaviors through Primary School Science Education

¹Clinical and Translational Sciences, Mayo Graduate School, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

²Department of Biology Teaching and Learning, University of MN, St. Paul, MN, USA

³Department of Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

⁴Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

⁵Mayo Medical School, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

⁶Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Chris Pierret, PhD
Mayo Clinic, Guggenheim 13, 200 ast St. SW, Rochester
MN-55905, USA
Tel: +1 507 773 0814
E-mail: pierret.christopher@mayo.edu

 

W. Charles Huskins M.D.,MSc.
Mayo Clinic, 200 1st Street SW, Rochester, MN-55905, USA
Tel: +1 507 255 8464
E-mail: huskins.charles@mayo.edu

Received date: April 27, 2016; Accepted date: June 20, 2016; Published date: June 27, 2016

Citation: Koep TH, Jenkins S, M Hammerlund ME, Clemens C, Fracica E, et al. (2016) Promotion of Influenza Prevention Beliefs and Behaviors through Primary School Science Education. J Community Med Health Educ 6:444. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000444

Copyright: © 2016 Koep TH, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: School-based campaigns to improve student health have demonstrated short-term success across various health topics. However, evidence of the effectiveness of programs in promoting healthy beliefs and behaviors is limited. We hypothesized that educational curricula teaching the science behind health promotion would increase student knowledge, beliefs and adherence to healthy behaviors, in this case related to influenza.
Methods: Integrated Science Education Outreach is a successful education intervention in Rochester, Minnesota public schools that has demonstrated improvements in student learning. Within this program, we designed novel curricula and assessments to determine if gains in knowledge extended to influenza prevention. Further, we coupled InSciEd Out programming with a clinical intervention, Influenza Prevention Prescription Education (IPPE), to compare students' attitudes, intentions and healthy behaviors utilizing surveys and hand hygiene monitoring equipment.
Results: 95 students participated in (IPPE) in the intervention school. Talking drawings captured improvement in influenza prevention understanding related to hand washing [pre n=17(43%); post n=30(77%)] and vaccination [pre n=2(5%); post n=15(38%)]. Findings from 1024 surveys from 566 students revealed strong baseline understanding and attitudes related to hand washing and cough etiquette (74% or greater positive responses). Automated handhygiene monitoring in school bathrooms and classrooms estimated compliance for both soap (overall median 63%, IQR 38% to 100%) and hand sanitizer use (0.04 to 0.24 uses per student per day) but did not show significant pre/ post IPPE differences.
Conclusions: Student understanding of principles of influenza prevention was reasonably high. Even with this baseline, InSciEd Out and IPPE improved students' unprompted knowledge of behaviors to prevent influenza, as reflected by talking drawings. This novel metric may be more sensitive in capturing knowledge among students than traditional assessment methods. However, IPPE did not produce further significant differences in student attitudes and behaviors regarding the flu.

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