State of the Knowledge and Approach of School Teachers Regarding Various Adolescent Health Issues from the Sangli District (Maharashtra), India: An Urban-Rural Difference

Introduction: School teachers can play an important role be identifying problems of adolescents and guide them towards healthy adolescence. Hence the current research was planned to study, their involvement in adolescent health. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the teachers from secondary schools in Sangli district (Maharashtra, India). Informed consent was taken. Data was collected by self-administered questionnaire during August-2015 to March-2016. Two-stage sampling technique was used; for the first stage stratified random sampling and convenience sampling for the second. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney test and binary logistic regression were used for statistical analysis. Results: Seven hundred and five participants were included in final analysis. Mean score of “involvement in adolescent health scale” was 48.4±13. Teachers from the urban area had a higher score but the urban-rural difference was not statistically significant. By using binary logistic regression, adolescent health training was found to be the best predictor for involvement in adolescent health. Mean scores for attitude, awareness and practices subscales were 70.2(±23), 48.7(±17.1) and 26.1(±15) respectively. Conclusion: Involvement of the teachers in adolescent health was low; teachers from urban area fared slightly better than rural counterparts. The attitude of the teachers regarding adolescent health was good, however, awareness and practices were poor. Adolescent health training helped in the better involvement of the teachers.