摘要：Few school-based interventions have been evaluated to assess health knowledge among high school students in rural southern areas of Palestine. This intervention study was to evaluate the impact of school-based nutrition education intervention on the knowledge of adolescents in a rural Palestinian community to nutrition health issues and to identify sources of nutrition knowledge. It compared adolescents in a two high schools (study group), which received health education on nutrition health with another two high school (control group), which did not receive any. The impact of the program was evaluated with a pre-test baseline knowledge and post-test gain in the knowledge 3 months later, using the same questionnaire. A total of 240 students selected by stratified sampling from each of the two randomly selected schools, a rural community in south Palestine participated in the program. The school-based intervention was effective in increasing health knowledge in the intervention as compared with the control group. The overall mean nutrition knowledge score increased by 1.91 in intervention group (baseline to follow-up: 4.59 to 6.50).The results showed that there was a significant difference (p = 0.005) between male and female students in the intervention group at post-test, whereas no significant differences for control group (p = 0.726). In contrast, there was no significant difference between scientific and non-scientific stream students in both the intervention and control groups (p = 0.531 and p = 0.337), respectively. School and media were the two most common sources of nutrition knowledge. Health knowledge of rural Palestinian adolescents can be improved through school-based nutrition education intervention. Further research needs to be conducted to determine the long-term impact.
