The Effect of Hand-Washing and Nutrition Education Given to Women with Chronic Diseases Living in Rural Areas During the Covid-19 Pandemic-Randomized Controlled Study

Objective: This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of handwashing and nutrition education given to women with chronic diseases living in rural areas during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods: The research is a randomized controlled study and its population consists of women over the age of 18 with at least one chronic disease registered in a Family Health Center of a District in Turkey. A total of 90 women were included in the study, 45 of which were drawn among the volunteers for each group. Hand washing and nutrition training were given to the intervention group, and the questionnaires were filled out again after 3 months. Only routine follow-ups were performed in the control group. For collecting the research data, the Descriptive Information Form, the Social Hand-Washing Knowledge Form, and the Nutritional Knowledge Level Scale for Adults prepared by the researchers by scanning the literature were used. Results: By the groups, the educational status, having children, smoking, alcohol use, monthly income, and working status of the cases do not show a statistically significant difference (p> 0.05) and it is seen that both groups are homogeneous. The mean age of women in the intervention group was 54.67±8.17 years, and the mean age of women in the control group was 57.18±9.88 years. The post-training scores of the intervention group in the Social Hand-Washing Knowledge Form and Food Choice were found to be significantly high compared to the cases of the control group (p=0.001; p<0.01). Conclusion: The training given to the women in rural areas created a significant benefit for them to have the appropriate food choices and hand-washing behaviours. More studies are needed to examine the effects of these interventions (ClinicalTrials.gov-Identifier Number: NCT04957017).