| خلاصه مقاله | Introduction
Iron-deficiency anemia is the commonest type of anemia throughout the world. It is an important health problem in developing countries. Anemia decreases body work ability and intellectual capacity. Additionally, anemia negatively influences learning and accomplishment in school girls reaching adolescence. Considering these problems, the current investigation was performed to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of high school girl students toward iron deficiency anemia in Tabriz, Iran.
Materials and Methods
We performed a cross-sectional study among the high school girl students referred to Ebnesina health center in Tabriz in order to receive adolescence health education and care in May 2021. Inclusion criteria were: healthy high school girl students, and experiencing no illness. To study Knowledge, attitude, and practice toward iron deficiency anemia, we used the standard questionnaire, which had acceptable reliability and validity in Persian. The questionnaire has totally 19 items including 18,14 and 9 items in the knowledge, attitude and practice parts, respectively. The data were analyzed applying descriptive and inferential statistics, containing independent t-test and one-way ANOVA, in SPSS software.
Results
Totally, 166 high school girl students participated in this study. The mean age (SD) of participants was 14.9(1.1) years. In the current study, 18.2%, 38.5%, and 3.9% of the students had good level of knowledge, attitude and practice toward iron deficiency anemia, respectively. Additionally, parental education showed a significant relationship with knowledge (P=0.01) and practice (P=0.017). But, parental occupation showed no statistically significant relationship with knowledge, attitude, and practice score.
Conclusions
As the results demonstrated, the knowledge of the most of students toward iron deficiency anemia was at a moderate level; although, most of participants had a poor practice. So, school –based educational programs is recommended in order to improve knowledge, attitude and practice of students toward iron deficiency anemia. |