Pascual-González Y, Puentes VSM, Pérez AGT, Rísquez PA

Language: Spanish
References: 16
Page: 61-66
PDF size: 161.01 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in adolescents and teenage pregnancies represent public health problems in Venezuela, which could be easily prevented with sex education and the use of diverse and appropriate birth control methods (BCM). According to the PAHO, in Venezuela in 2002 there was a teenage pregnancy rate of 20.5%; which placed as one of the countries in Latin America with the highest rate. Due to the fact that STDs and teenage pregnancies are related to a lack of or limited formal education, an experimental study of education was conducted in 81 students from seventh until ninth grade in the San Pedro Parish, Caracas, during the 2009-2010 school year. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a health education intervention about STDs, teenage pregnancy and BCM in teenagers. A self-administered private questionnaire with informed consent was used to determine this and the results show that there was a statistically significant difference in the knowledge before and after the intervention (t de Student=-3.45; p‹0.01). However, the difference between sexes proved to be not significant (t=0.73; p›0.05), while it did prove to be significant among the different academic grades (t=2.22; p‹0.05). The intervention proved to be effective in increasing the level of knowledge about the different topics of STDs, teenage pregnancy and BCM in teenagers. Preventive strategies such as these are highly recommended in other institutions.

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