Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of school-based interventions in promoting child safety and reducing unintentional childhood injuries. Methods This cluster randomized trial with 1:1 allocation of clusters to intervention and control arm was conducted in the public and private schools of Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka, over a period of 10 months. Study participants included children from standard 5–7 in schools selected for the study. 10 schools that could accommodate 1100 students each, were randomly allocated to the interventional and control arm. A comprehensive child safety and injury prevention module was developed based on the opinions of school teachers through focus group discussions. This module was periodically taught to the students of intervention arm by the teachers. The children in control arm did not receive any intervention. Outcome was assessed by determining the incidence of unintentional injuries and type of injuries from the questionnaire used at the baseline, and at the end of three, six, and ten months. Results Unintentional injuries declined progressively from baseline until the end of the study in both the interventional arm (from 52.9% to 2.5%) and control arm (from 44.7% to 32%) [AOR (95% CI) 0.458 (0.405–0.518); P value <0.001]. The decline in incidence of injuries in the interventional arm was higher than that in the control arm (50.4% vs 12.7%; P <0.001). Conclusion School based educational intervention using child safety and injury prevention modules is effective in reducing unintentional injuries among school children over a 10-month period.
Background HIV is an infectious disease affecting 36.7 million people worldwide. In recent times, Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) has become accessible to the majority of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) and this has transformed the course of infection to one that is chronic, characterized by fewer diseases pathognomonic of AIDS. In view of this, there is a pressing need for better markers, apart from the routine HIV indicators, to detect comorbidities such as Neurocognitive Impairment (NCI). The aim of this study was to find out the association between Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) index and Neurocognitive function in HIV positive patients. Methods In our study, we included 97 HIV positive patients and their Neurocognitive function was assessed using a combination of Montreal Cognitive Assessment and Grooved Pegboard Test, while VACS index was calculated using the most recent laboratory values. Binomial Logistics Regression analyses, adjusting for potential confounding variables, was performed to determine the association between VACS score and Neurocognitive Impairment. Results We found that a higher VACS Index was associated with global and domain-wise Neurocognitive impairment (p < 0.01), specifically in the domains of attention (p < 0.01) and fine motor skills (p = 0.01). Our study also showed that among all the VACS components, older age (p = 0.02) and lower hemoglobin (p < 0.01) values were associated with global NCI. After plotting an ROC curve, a VACS cut-off score of 11.00 was identified as it had good sensitivity (87.0%) and specificity (71.4%) in identifying Global NCI. Conclusion Our findings extend prior research on the use of VACS Index to predict global and domain-wise NCI in HIV-positive patients. However, further research with more comprehensive neurocognitive testing is required in our setting before VACS Index can be used as a tool to screen for neurocognitive dysfunction among PLHIV.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.