Impact of COVID-19 awareness on health-related behavior among adolescents in Nepal

Abstract

Introduction: With occurrence of COVID-19, many countries have initiated lockdown in an effort to control the pandemic. These measures can only be effective when the people co-operate. The awareness and health-related behavior have a major role in determining society’s response. Meanwhile adolescents are at the risk of deviating from disciplined health-related behaviors due to turbulence arising from their hormones despite of their awareness. This study aims to study COVID-19 awareness and its impact on health-related behavior of adolescents.
 Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional web-based online study of 299 adolescents enrolled in various educational programs, between ages 13 to 19 years was conducted between June 18, 2020 and July 11, 2020 in Nepal. The questionnaire consisted of demographic characteristics, 16 items on knowledge and 40 items on behavior. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests and binary logistic regression were conducted in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.
 Results: A total of 299 adolescents were enrolled in the study. Majority (92.6%) of the adolescents had adequate awareness. Positive health-related behavior was seen in 72% of the adolescents. Spiritual behavior was the most affected in comparison to physical, social and psychological behavior. Adolescents with adequate awareness on COVID-19 were 10.67 times more likely to perform positive health related behavior (P=0.005; 95% CI=2.01-56.47).
 Conclusion: Majority of the adolescents had adequate awareness. Significant percentage of adolescents had positive health-related behavior. Positive behaviour was not proportionately in level with adequate awareness. Effective health programs and policies are needed to transform adequate awareness into positive health-related behaviour for effective control of disease.

Application of Social Marketing Mix Strategies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The studies investigated awareness, knowledge, behaviour change, implementation of health messages, etc. Many previous studies have shown social marketing mix strategies were applied in creating public awareness for positive health behaviour change (Abdulla et al, 2020;Bae et al, 2021;Banstola & Dhungana, 2021;Chisadza et al, 2021;Hossen et al, 2020;Hussain et al, 2021;Karn et al, 2020;Mongilala et al, 2020;Onuora et al, 2021;Rai et al, 2021;Sharma et al, 2021;Siddique et al, 2020;Soon et al, 2021;Tam et al, 2021;Tolga Şentürka, 2021;Waheed et al, 2020;Wardani et al, 2020) and the strategies components were product, price, place, promotion, public, policy, partnership, and purse strings. The interventions have significantly influenced the behaviour regarding using face masks and sanitizers and maintaining social distancing.…”

“…This study revealed that more than 90% of adolescents had an excellent understanding of COVID-19, and there was a significant impact on the children having highly educated and high family incomes. Hand washing, using sanitizers, and staying home activities were seen as influential among most of the population (Banstola & Dhungana, 2021). In addition, it was found that those with technical training (in fields like engineering, nursing, and science) exhibited healthy behaviours.…”

“…The products are health-related counselling (Mostafavi et al, 2021), practices, and ideas (Ismail et al, 2022). The products are counselling, getting facemasks, maintaining social distancing, focusing on a doctor visit if symptoms are seen, washing hands from time to time, and using sanitizer (Banstola & Dhungana, 2021;Sharma et al, 2021;Soon et al, 2021;Wardani et al, 2020), vaccine (Mubeen et al, 2020;Rai et al, 2021) behavioral rules, and adopt hygiene norms (Graffigna et al, 2020), facilitate better self-care (Chisadza et al, 2021), promotion of blood donations (Waheed et al, 2020) to prevent coronavirus diseases. The product should solve specific problem and generate ideas or knowledge.…”

“…In social marketing, promotional activities run with non-profit motives (Kobayashi et al, 2013) and media play a significant role in communicating messages. In the this study, promotion was done through videos shared through the WhatsApp group (Waheed et al, 2020), voice, and SMS messages (Tam et al, 2021), Online news (Banstola & Dhungana, 2021), messages through mobile, and miking , hoarding boards, display, Posters and billboards (Hossen et al, 2020), online media, Viber, Facebook, and government websites (Karn et al, 2020) radio, television, print media Rai et al, 2021;Sharma et al, 2021), health education interventions are given through social media (Al-Dmour et al, 2020;Fadzil & Lourdunathan, 2020;Soon et al, 2021;Wardani et al, 2020), public mass media campaigns (Mubeen et al, 2020), and community outreach through phone calls and messages.…”

“…The policy included a lockdown, government orders to keep a certain distance physically or socially, the availability of resources, a change in behaviour, etc. The policy aspects of the above studies focused on increasing access to health behaviour by using facemasks, maintaining social distancing, visiting doctors, washing hands from time to time, and using sanitizer (Banstola & Dhungana, 2021), guidelines for quarantine, isolation, travel restrictions, testing and contact tracing of suspected people (Sharma et al, 2021), resistance to crowded places visit (Soon et al, 2021)to prevent coronavirus diseases. The governments also launched health insurance and community outreach programs.…”