Intervention to Improve Menstrual Health Among Adolescent Girls Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior in Iran: A Cluster-randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Objectives: Poor menstrual health may lead to school absenteeism and adverse health outcomes for adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of pubertal and menstrual health education on health and preventive behaviors among Iranian secondary school girls.Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a health intervention program. A total of 578 students (including intervention and control participants) in 12 schools in Tehran Province, Iran were included by multistage random sampling. The program comprised seven 2-hour educational sessions. After confirming the reliability and validity of a researcher-made questionnaire, that questionnaire was used to collect the required data, and the groups were followed up with after 6 months.Results: After the educational intervention, the mean scores of menstrual health-related knowledge and constructs of the theory of planned behavior were significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group (p<0.001 for all dimensions).Conclusions: The results of this study emphasize the effectiveness of menstrual health interventions in schools. These findings should also encourage health policy-makers to take committed action to improve performance in schools.

Preferences for and intention to use an app for premenstrual mental health symptoms using the Health Behaviour Model (HBM)

“…As the constructs of self-efficacy and perceived susceptibility have been identified as not being predictive of behavioural intention in this sample, future work may wish to explore the same research question with a different behavioural model. One such model is the theory of planned behaviour which has previously been used to examine mental health help-seeking intention 50 and interventions designed to improve menstrual health 51 . Likewise, as the current study explored only factors predicting intention to use, more work is necessary to understand how this intention to use translates to real-world usage, and moreover how app developers can promote sustained usage in this population given that drop-out from mental health apps is frequent 52 .…”