No need to wait: We - medical students - can help for public health education just now

Objective: To evaluate short and mid-term results of the education programs that have been implemented among 15 kids who is registered in kinder garden.

Method: An education program implemented for 9 weeks period among 15 kids, aged between 10 and 14, who are registered to Beyoglu 75. Yil Kinder Garden, which works under Turkish Social Services and Kids Protection Institution. Most of those kids have experience as street workers in the past. Topics that have been covered during the implementation of this education program are; personal care, healthy and balanced diet, sleep regulation, addiction, benefits of physical exercise and stress management.
Trainers were two medical students at 4th graduate year in Istanbul Medical Faculty. Slide shows and role plays are used in this program and children were actively included in discussions. In 4 of the programs, pre and post-education assessment were performed. To evaluate the mid-term results of the education, a focus group discussion was hold with 12 children from the group, who were applied the same tests about sleep regulation and healthy and balanced diet.  

Findings and Conclusion: The rate of the correct answers of the pre, post and mid term tests for the topic of sleep regulation are 52.7%, 66.6% and 63.6%, for healthy and balanced diet are 37.7%, 71.1% and 57,7% respectively. We are also able to define through the focus group discussion that the children has enough knowledge especially about personal care, but due to lack of income they are unable to obtain cleaning materials. We find out that the children are unable to accomplish behavioral changes because the neighborhood and their families do not encourage them. At the same time, working with more small groups in such kind of programs will be more efficient. For qualitative evaluation such educations, developing different methods could be more helpful.