Do Right, Be Bright: A Protocol on the Development of an Inter-Professional Health Intervention Model for Pre-School Children Through a Community-Based Service-Learning Initiative

Sobia Bilal; Snigdha Misra; Sumaira Hussain; Seok Shin Tan; Ekta Priya

doi:10.2147/JMDH.S405031

Do Right, Be Bright: A Protocol on the Development of an Inter-Professional Health Intervention Model for Pre-School Children Through a Community-Based Service-Learning Initiative

J Multidiscip Healthc. 2023 May 10:16:1301-1310. doi: 10.2147/JMDH.S405031. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Sobia Bilal¹, Snigdha Misra², Sumaira Hussain³, Seok Shin Tan^{2

4}, Ekta Priya⁵

Affiliations

¹ Division of Prevention and Public Health Sciences, Pediatric Dentistry, College of Dentistry, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
² Division of Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Health Sciences, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
³ Department of Community Medicine, School of Medicine, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
⁴ Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Malaysia.
⁵ MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland.

Abstract

An inter-professional project with a collaborative endeavor between the programs of Dentistry, Nutrition and Medicine was carried out with the aim to emphasise oral health maintenance, making the right nutritional choices and effective hand washing among pre-school children. The purpose of this paper is to share a detailed description of the design, development process, implementation, and planned evaluation of an interprofessional school-based health promotion intervention model "Do Right, Be Bright". This model is part of a quasi-experimental study, targeting pre-school children as the "Targets of Change" through the empowerment of school teachers as the "Agents of Change". The program design was based on Bartholomew's Intervention Mapping Approach, which proposes a direction for developing a theory-based health promotion intervention and on the most extensively applied theories of health behavior, the Health Belief Model. Therefore, based on a thorough literature review and needs assessment, three key areas of needs were identified for the targeted preschool children: oral hygiene, hand hygiene and nutrition. The efficacy of this model will be pilot tested in a preschool in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.

Keywords: hand hygiene; health-promoting schools; interprofessional education; nutrition; oral hygiene.