Health Awareness among Female Undergraduate Medical Students in Saudi Arabia.

This study was conducted to assess the level of health awareness (HA) among students attending three undergraduate programs in the Colleges of Applied Medical Sciences (CAMS) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (SA). A modified self-reported survey was utilized to measure HA demonstrating four domains: Nutrition (NU), Personal Health (PH), Physical Exercise (PE), and Body Build (BB). The questionnaire was distributed to 302 female students attending the first semester of the academic year 2014-2015 BS degree in Radiology Sciences (RS), Clinical Laboratory (CL), and Health Education (HE) departments. Bloom's taxonomy was utilized to describe the three cognitive levels. Synthesizing, creating, and evaluating were grouped to represent high level indicators; applying cognitive skills only revealed an intermediate level; while memorizing and listing demonstrated low levels. In a 5-point Likert scale, the overall mean (M) of HA among CAMS students was 3.82 with the highest among students attending HE (M = 3.89). The domain of PH ranked first with a high average (M = 4.30). There were significant differences (α = 0.05), in the level of HA in PH and BB domains, among students in terms of program specialty only, but no such significant differences were found for other characteristics. The study recommended incorporating health promotion concepts within teaching curricula and conducting health and education campaigns by health education institutions.