The effect of education on improvement of intake of fruits and vegetables aiming at preventing cardiovascular diseases

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular diseases refer to a group of diseases that affect the cardiovascular system; principally cardiac diseases, vascular diseases of the brain and kidney and peripheral arterial diseases which are caused by various factors. Considering the importance of nutrition education, especially the intake of fruits and vegetables, this study was performed to determine the effect of health education, Based on the Health Belief Model, on the improvement of intake of fruits and vegetables aiming at preventing cardiovascular diseases among high school girls in the city of Shahre- Kord, Iran. METHODS This was a quasi-experimental intervention study, in which 120 female students of high schools in Isfahan were selected through convenient sampling and were divided into two groups of experimental (60) and control (60). The instruments for data collection were the Health Belief Model and FFQ questionnaires. The HBM questionnaire was completed three times (before, immediately and two months after the intervention) and the FFQ questionnaire was completed two times (before and two months after the intervention) by the students. After the pre-test, six educational sessions were provided for the experimental group. Finally, data were collected and analyzed by SPSS 16 (ttest, paired t-test and repeated measure ANOVA). RESULTS There were no differences between the two groups in terms of demographic variables. Before the intervention, there were not any significant differences between the scores of different structures of this model between the two groups (p>0.05); however, after the intervention, significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups in the levels of knowledge, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, perceived efficacy and performance (p<0.001). CONCLUSION According to the results, the intervention had a positive impact on the improvement of intake of fruits and vegetables among the students.