The Effectiveness of an Educational Intervention on Knowledge and Practice of Female Students in High Schools about Osteoporosis, In Bandar Abbas, Iran

Osteoporosis is a skeletal disorder that occurs more often in the elderly, and its obvious characteristic is the reduction of bone strength which poses the person at the risk of fracture. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an educational intervention on knowledge and practice of high school girls in Bandar Abbas regarding osteoporosis. A semi-experimental study was conducted on a sample of 419 high school students in Bandar Abbas, Iran, wich were selected using a randomized cluster sampling and assigned to intervention and control groups.  The data collection tool was a questionnaire. Data were entered into SPSS version 19 software and analyzed using descriptive statistics and T-test and paired T-test. The differtence between the mean scores of knowledge and practice in intervention and control groups was not significant before the educational intervention. In the intervention group, the mean score of knowledge and practice increased significantly (p-value= 0.001) after the intervention. The mean of the practice score of the intervention group increased significantly from 22.2 in the pre-intervention to 29.79 in the post-intervention stage (p-value = 0.028). According to the results of this study, the administered educational intervention has been effective in promoting the level of knowledge and practice of high school female students towards osteoporosis. Therefore, planning and implementation of this educational model in the target population can be effective for prevention of the diseases at an advanced age.