Effectiveness of School-Based Education Programs on Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescents: South-East of Iran

Background: Improving and providing community health is one of the main pillars of community development. Objectives: The present study aimed at investigating the effect of school-based interventions on health-risk behaviors among adolescents in the South-East of Iran. Methods: This interventional quasi-experimental study recruited a total of 420 adolescent females in the 10th grade of public schools, selected by the census in Zahedan, Iran. The study tool was a questionnaire of high-risk health behaviors with a Content Validity Ratio (CVR) of 0.80, a Content Validity Index (CVI) of 0.88, and reliability (alpha) of 0.70. After the pre-test, multidimensional interventions (individual education, group education, individual counseling, modern education, and parents' educational packages) were provided for the intervention group from October 2015 to June 2016. After a three-month interval, the post-test was conducted during October 2016. Results: The mean score changes in interventional and control group were -0.7 (2.3) and 0.1 (2.7) for high-risk behaviors; 0.8 (5.5) and -0.4 (5.2) for healthy nutritional behaviors, and physical activity behaviors with 1.4 (4.5) and 0.3 (5.1). Also, there was a positive significant relationship between score changes of high-risk behaviors (P < 0.001), healthy nutritional behaviors, and physical activity (P < 0.05) of students with study group (interventional and control) in univariate linear regression, yet in the multivariate linear model, only high-risk behaviors remained (P < 0.001). Furthermore, after the intervention, three simultaneous behaviors decreased among the students in the intervention group by 8.4% compared to 1.6% in the control group. The individual consultations among adolescents, who smoked cigarettes or hookahs, drank alcohol, abused drugs or had unprotected sex resulted in high-risk behaviors. Conclusions: To sum up, school-based interventions can improve health behaviors if they target multiple environmental and behavioral dimensions with a complementary strategy in the target society. Therefore, it is recommended for interventions to be designed and tailored to the needs of students and employed continuously to maintain the effect of education.