Effect of Health Education Program Based on Health Belief Model on Prognosis of Urinary Tract Infection in Pregnant Women

Background: Urinary tract infection is a common cause of morbidity in pregnant women. The success of any educational intervention rests on the proper application of health behavior theories and models. Aim of the study was to investigate the effect of a health education program based on Health Belief Model (HBM) on the prognosis of Urinary Tract infection (UTI) in pregnant women. The study hypothesis was that women’s knowledge and practices will be improved, and this will lead to improvements in UTI symptoms and urine culture. Subjects & methods: Research design: an open label controlled quasi-experimental study with pre-post assessment was used in this study. Setting: the antenatal care (ANC) clinics in the primary health care centers affiliated to the Ministry of Health in urban areas of Port-Said city. Subjects: consisted of 90 pregnant women in first and second trimesters diagnosed with UTI were recruited consecutively in the study sample, each woman was randomly assigned to either the intervention or the control group as 45 women per group.Tools of data collection: include; structure interview schedule and a lab sheet. Results: showed that majority were living in urban areas, with no formal education. More women had a history of previous UTI (53.3% versus 40.0%) for studied and control women respectively. no statistically significant differences in their baseline (pre-intervention) scores of symptoms, knowledge of UTI, related health behavior practices, or Health Belief Model (HBM). At the post-intervention phase, the scores of symptoms severity and bothersome were statistically significantly lower among the study group with median scores zero. The knowledge and health behavior practices scores were statistically significantly higher among the study group with knowledge medians 81.00 and 31.00 respectively (p < 0.001). The scores of HBM were statistically significantly higher among the study group (p < 0.001). The pus cells and the urine culture in urine were less among the study group both in the post and 3-month follow up samples (p < 0.001) (p=0.03), respectively. Conclusion: the study concluded that the study intervention was protective against the risk of having a positive urine culture at 3-months follow-up. Recommendations: the study recommended that the program and its booklet should be implemented in ANC settings.