A cluster randomised controlled trial on effectiveness of health education-based intervention to improve parental practice in preventing unintentional childhood injury among parents attending health clinics: A study protocol.

Introduction: Unintentional childhood injuries is one of the public health challenges among developing countries. The injuries often cause mortality and have significant burden of morbidity in Malaysia, and this can be prevented. Parents play important role in practicing preventive measures to reduce likelihood of unintentional injuries among their children. The objective of the study is to develop, implement, and evaluate the effects of health education intervention on parental practices to reduce unintentional childhood injuries among parents of young children.

Materials And Methods: Health education module focusing on preventing childhood unintentional injuries was developed based on information-motivation-behavioural skills (IMB) theory. This intervention was implemented among parents of children under seven years attending government health clinics in Putrajaya. The effectiveness of the intervention was assessed using single-blinded, randomised controlled trial. Parents were excluded if their children have any chronic disease or disabilities or are currently participating in any other community trials. All four health clinics in Putrajaya with eight personalised care zones/groups were included in the study and randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups after the recruitment of eligible parents is completed. The intervention was delivered by the researcher, and data consisting of validated self-administered parental questionnaires were collected at the baseline, one-month post-intervention and three-month post-intervention to assess the effects of the intervention. Data were analysed using Generalised Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) adjusting for covariates.

Results: The study is anticipated to be able to discover factors associated with injury preventive practice among the parents of children attending selected government child health clinics in Putrajaya and determine the effect of the health education intervention on the parental injury preventive practice.

Conclusion: The implementation of the intervention to the parents is expected to improve the parents' knowledge, motivation and practice to prevent unintentional childhood injuries. The health education module developed in this study can be taught to the health staff to standardize their knowledge and transfer of information to the parents during visit. The intervention module can be used to complement existing health education activities in the government health clinics.