Introduction & Objective: Pupils have efficient potential to increase community awareness and promoting community health through participating in the health education programs. Child to family health education program is one of the communicative strategies that was applied in this field trial study. Because of high prevalence of Brucellosis in Hamadan province, Iran, the aim of this study was promoting families’ knowledge and preventive behaviors about Brucellosis in the rural areas by using child to family health education method.
Materials & Methods: In this nonequivalent control group design study three rural schools were chosen (one as intervention and two others as control). At first knowledge and behavior of families about Brucellosis were determined using a designed questionnaire. Then the families were educated through “child to family” procedure. At this stage the students gained information. Then they were instructed to teach their parents what they had learned. After 3 months following the last session of education, the level of knowledge and behavior changes of the families about Brucellosis were determined and analyzed by paired t-test.
Results: The results showed significant improvement in the knowledge of the mothers. The knowledge of the mothers about the signs of Brucellosis disease in human increased from 1.81 to 3.79 (t:-21.64, ig:0.000), and also the knowledge on the signs of Brucellosis in animals increased from 1.48 to 2.82 (t:-10.60, sig:0.000).
Conclusion: Child to family health education program is one of the effective and available methods, which would be useful and effective in most communities, and also Students potential would be effective for applying in the health promotion programs.