The Effect of Health Promotion Educational Interventions on Self-Care Behaviors of Nutrition and Physical Activity Among Universities Staff in Southeastern Iran

Background: A workplace has an important role in staff health. Besides, it is a suitable place for performing interventions to reduce the risk of suffering from health problems associated with physical inactivity and overweight, and to reduce risks of cardiovascular and non-communicable diseases. Objectives: This study aims to investigate the effects of health promotion educational interventions on self-care behaviors of nutrition and physical activity among the selected university staff in Zahedan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The present quasi-experimental research was conducted in 2020-2021 in Zahedan, southeastern Iran. The control and intervention groups included a random selectionof 110 and 144 non-academic staff members of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (ZAUMS) as well as Sistan and Baluchestan University (SBU), respectively. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, an online researcher-made questionnaire (Porsline, https://survey.porsline.ir) (CVR: 92%; CVI: 90%; reliability: 85%) was uploaded, which had been already approved. Besides, educational booklets were provided to the intervention group via WhatsApp and Soroush messengers, through which the participants were allowed to ask their questions after every session. One month after the intervention, the online questionnaires were re-uploaded on Porsline and recompleted by the participants. The results were analyzed using SPSS V21.0. Results: The results indicated that the self-care behaviors of nutrition and physical activity increased significantly in terms of awareness, attitude, and performance among the intervention group participants after conducting the educational intervention (P-value < 0.05). Accordingly, the educational intervention resulted in an increase in the level of awareness, attitude, and performance of nutrition and physical activity among the university staff of the intervention group. Besides, the performance of physical activity was significantly affected not only by the intervention (P < 0.001) but also by work experience (P < 0.001). In addition, nutrition behavior was significantly better in female staff than male staff (P = 0.048), but there was no significant correlation between gender and the intervention (P = 0.266). Conclusions: The educational program executed in the present study was shown to be effective in promoting self-care behaviors of nutrition and physical activity among the university staff. Thus, health programmers and policymakers can have a significant role in promoting staff health by executing interventional educational programs. Accordingly, the efficiency of the whole system will improve by adopting these strategies and programs.