The effectiveness of a school-based intervention program to address non-communicable disease risk factors among high school learners in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya
Loading...
Date
2024
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Univeversity of the Western Cape
Abstract
The impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is becoming a major public health problem
globally. Major NCDs such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer occurring in adulthood
are associated with risk factors adopted during adolescence including tobacco use, alcohol abuse,
unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity. Interventions to decrease these risks should therefore
start early and school-based intervention programs have been found to be effective since they
target a large number of learners. The overall purpose of this study was to design, implement and
establish the effects of a school-based intervention program to address risk factors of NCDs
among high school learners. The study utilized a concurrent embedded strategy of mixed methods
and adopted Intervention Mapping (IM) as a framework that translated into a four-phase study.
Each phase informed the next and the findings culminated into a school-based intervention
program implemented among form three (grade 11) learners in two secondary schools in Uasin
Gishu County. The first phase was to collect baseline information regarding the prevalence and
knowledge of NCD risk factors and the study sample was 1,281 learners from ten mixed
day/boarding secondary schools in Uasin Gishu County. Data was collected from the learners
using structured, self-administered questionnaires with part one being the WHO STEP-wise
instrument for chronic disease risk factor surveillance and the second part assessed the
participant’s knowledge of NCDs and their risk factors. The second phase was to conduct a
systematic review of literature around school-based interventions to find the best evidence in
addressing health risk factors of NCDs among high school learners