Breaking barriers: Impact of structured health education on pelvic health and menstrual hygiene (PHMH) awareness in adolescent school going boys

Anu Arora, Sagarika Patwardhan, Apurv Shimpi, Suroshree Mitra
Purpose:

To study the effect of a structured 6 weeks education program on the knowledge and attitude of Pelvic health and Menstrual hygiene (PHMH) among school going adolescent boys

To study the comparison between structured 6 weeks education program & educational flipbook on the knowledge and attitude of PHMH among school going adolescent boys

Methods:

Post Institutional ethical committee clearance, a single blinded, parallel group, active control, randomized control study was done on 184 school going adolescent boys between 11-15 years of age in an urban region of India. The boys were randomly divided and one group received a 6-week structured health education program on PHMH & the other group was given a flipbook regarding PHMH. Knowledge and attitude about pelvic health & menstrual hygiene was measured using “The Adolescent Pelvic Health and Menstrual Hygiene Questionnaire” before commencing the intervention and 6 weeks at the end of the intervention. Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon sign rank test were used to analyze the data in SPSS version 29.

Results:

Mean (±standard deviation) of knowledge scores at pre-intervention of experimental group was 5.17 (± 3.89) and control group was 5.60 (± 4.10) which increased to 12.69 (±4.03) and 12.17 (± 4.55) respectively indicating that both methods were equally effective in improving knowledge, while the mean (SD) of attitude scores at pre-intervention of experimental group 7.12 (± 3.74) and control group was 6.98 (± 3.78)  which increased to 9.57 (± 2.44) and 8.03 (± 2.05) respectively, indicating that structured education program was better than flipbook in improving attitude towards PHMH.

Conclusion(s):

The findings of this study revealed that structured health education program is an effective way to improve knowledge and attitude towards pelvic health and menstrual hygiene in school going adolescent boys and an educational flipbook can increase the knowledge about PHMH.

Implications:

Educating boys through this program will make them stakeholders and allies to support the female peers, family members and future partners which will help dismantle stigma and create a safe environment where girls can have dignified pelvic health & menstruation reassuring gender equality towards health education and empowerment.

Funding acknowledgements:
No funding was received for the study
Keywords:
pelvic health
menstrual health hygiene
genital health and hygiene
Primary topic:
Pelvic, sexual and reproductive health
Second topic:
Education
Third topic:
Globalisation: health systems, policies and strategies
Did this work require ethics approval?:
Yes
Name the institution and ethics committee that approved your work:
IEC Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation IEC for Biomedical and health research, DY Patil Deemed to be University
Provide the ethics approval number:
IEC-SIOR/Agenda 069 & DYP/IECBH/2023/290
Has any of this material been/due to be published or presented at another national or international conference prior to the World Physiotherapy Congress 2025?:
No

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