Systematic review of the effectiveness of health education interventions in promoting knowledge, attitude, and practice of Iranian health volunteers

Community participation in health programs is one of the requirements for their success. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions in promoting knowledge, attitude, and practice of health volunteers     

Information sources or data: 

This systematic review was conducted in 2020 using the keywords health volunteers OR community health volunteers AND educational intervention AND Iran and health volunteers OR communicator’s community health AND randomized controlled trial OR clinical trial AND Iran. The used Databases / search engines were Scopus, PubMed, Magiran, SID and Google scholar.

Selection methods for study:

 In the initial search, 1128 articles were retrieved in various databases. The interventional studies in which the effectiveness of educational intervention had been examined and the studies related to the health volunteers program in Iran were the most important inclusion criteria and interventions performed by health volunteers for a specific group of people were considered as the most important exclusion criteria in this study. Finally, 16 articles were included in the study for comprehensive review and data extraction.

The results showed that most of the studies were quasi-experimental, the duration of the intervention was from one day to 2 months, and follow-up time was between 10 days to two years. In all cases, after the educational intervention, the scores of the knowledge, attitude, and practice in different health-related issues showed a significant increase compared to before the intervention. Also, the use of theories and models in educational interventions had a positive effect on increasing awareness, changing attitudes, and improving the performance.

The results show the positive effect of educational interventions for health volunteers in various health-related issues, so by conducting educational interventions for health volunteers, they can play an important role in the community health.