School-Based Stroke Education Through On-Demand E-learning During Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: Itoigawa Stroke Awareness Campaign

Abstract

IntroductionRaising stroke awareness is important to shorten the interval from onset to consultation. We performed a school-based stroke education by on-demand e-learning during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. MethodsWe performed on-demand e-learning and distributed the online-and paper-based manga about stroke for students and parental guardians in August 2021. We carried out this in a manner similar to the prior effective online stroke awareness initiatives in Japan. An online post-educational survey in October 2021 was conducted to evaluate the awareness effects by asking participants about their knowledge. We also investigated the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at the discharge of stroke patients who were treated in our hospital during the before-and after-campaign periods, respectively. ResultsWe distributed the paper-based manga and asked to work on this campaign to all 2,429 students (1,545 elementary school and 884 junior high school students) who lived in Itoigawa. We acquired 261 (10.7%) online responses from the students and 211 (8.7%) responses from their parental guardians. The number of students who chose all correct answers in the survey significantly increased after the campaign (205/261, 78.5%) compared to that before the campaign (135/261, 51.7%) and those of parental guardians showed similar trends (before campaign 93/211, 44.1%; after campaign 198/211, 93.8%). We investigated 282 stroke patients (90 patients before and 192 patients after-campaign period), and their mRS at discharge aftercampaign seemed to be improved. ConclusionOnly 10.7% of students and 8.7% of the parental guardians worked on the online survey. However, the number of those who chose correct answers about stroke increased after the campaign. After this campaign, the mRS of stroke patients at discharge improved although it was unclear if this is a direct result of this activity.

Stroke Awareness and Knowledge in the At-Risk Population: A Community-Based Study

“…Social media-based campaigns using advertisements provide feasibility and cost-effectiveness to raise stroke awareness in the general population [20]. Such campaigns can be particularly effective during pandemic disasters like the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, with lower costs compared to in-person or paper distribution methods [21]. Our study revealed a higher proportion (47%) having good stroke awareness compared to a previous study of Thai patients during 2010-2011, which found that only one-third of patients with a stroke were aware of stroke symptoms [9].…”