Effects of Health Literacy Program with Social Media for Obesity Prevention among Overweight in Personnel Health Promoting Center 7th Khon Kaen

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study aimed to assess the effects of health literacy program with social media for obesity prevention in overweight personnel in Health Promoting Center (HPC) in Thailand.  The sample was randomized by multistage and inclusion criteria were set. An experimental group was overweight personnel in the 7^th HPC, Khon Kaen province. A comparison group was overweight personnel in the 9^th HPC, Nakhon Ratchasima. The experimental and the comparison groups were 35volunteers per group. The experimental group received a health literacy program including lecture from the researcher, group discussion, knowledge and information via media and social media activities by close FACEBOOK.The control group normally received the health education information by health service staff. The duration of the program was 12 weeks. Comparative mean difference within and between groups were analyzed by using paired t-test and independent t-test at 95% confidence interval.

The results showed that, after the experiment, the experimental group had significantly mean scores of health literacy in term of accessibility, knowledge, communication, decision making, self-management, and literacy media about obesity prevention higher than before intervention and higher than the control group. (p-value<0.05). Especially, the mean scores of waist, body mass index, and body fat percentage of the experimental group had significantly lower than before the experiment and lower than the control group (p-value<0.05).