effect of designed home visit program on promoting cutaneous leishmaniasis preventive behaviors

ABSTRACT

Cutaneous Leishmaniasis is the second common parasitic disease in Iran. According to several studies, insufficient knowledge of mothers about the prevention strategies related to occurrence of the disease in their children are significant. Therefor, educating of the rural families by home visit program could be effective approach to prevent Cutaneous Leishmaniasis. The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of designed home visit program on promoting preventive behaviors regarding Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in rural families of Tang Hanna district in Neyriz. The study was a quasi-experiemental desing which 60 families with at least one child [with 6-12 years old] were randomly selected, with [no Cutaneous Leishmaniasis] from seven rural areas and assigned to two groups of experimental and control groups and matched to demographic indicators [age, education, income...]. Data collection tools included a questionnaire and observational- interviewing checklist about preventive behaviors. The Pretest phase was performed in two groups during 3 meetings. Then, home visit program was performed in experimental group for 4-5 meetings. The duration of each meeting was about 45 minutes for the period of one month and half. Then the post test phase was performed in the two groups, after intervention. According to the results, independent t- test and Chi-squire test indicated that there was no significant difference between experimental group and control group [in demographic variables such as age, sex, education, ...] before the intervention. The t-test and Chi-square test indicated that there as not any significant differences between experimental and control group [P > 0.05]. Paired t-test and independent t- test indicated that there was a significant difference between before and after intervention about families performance in the experimental group [P < 0.001] compared to the control group. Also Independent t-test indicated that there was a significant difference between experimental group and control group after intervention in some preventive behaviors regarding Cutaneous Leishmaniasis [P < 0.001]. According to the findings, it can be claimed that using a designed home visit program could be an effective approach in the promoting of preventive behaviors about Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in the subjects. Moreover the results indicate that home-visit programs seem appropriate strategy for improving families performance in order to prevent Cutaneous Leishmaniasis