PUBLIC HEALTH PROGRAMS STRATEGIES FOR ACOUSTIC EDUCATION AND HEARING HEALTH PROMOTION TO STUDENTS IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL

摘要

In past decades, there has been increasing concern with recreational noise, which children and young people are the most exposed to, with a growing trend to hearing disorders. Among the intervention programs related to noise effects and validated for Portuguese language, there is Dangerous Decibels) (DD). In Brazil, the School Health Program (SHP) is an intersectorial Health and Education policy, which aims to contribute to the students' whole education by means of health promotion, prevention and care. The main objective of this study was to evaluate DD program, included in the SHP interventions. Exploratory, quantitative research was carried out on a case study among 6th graders of 32 Municipal Schools from Itajai, Brazil. For the data collection, validated, structured questionnaires were used (before, after and three months after the educational interventions). During 2018, DD Program was carried out by the same tutor to all classes. In the result analyses, descriptive and comparative statistics was used, significance level of 5%, by means of the Statistica 13.3 software. The sample comprised 1,835 students, 838 females and 997 males. Mean age was 11.53 years, standard deviation of 0.8. The greatest part of the group (96.9%) had never taken part in any educational campaigns at school, had risky hearing habits (pointing out the use of earphones for 91.1%), reported tinnitus (72.2%), did not know any information on the subject (62.6%), and did not know how to protect themselves from noise (58.9%). The assessed questions, after DD activities, evidenced improvement. The study calls attention for the scarcity of interventions on the theme at schools or how to cope with the problem and shows the effectiveness of the DD to enhance knowledge and preventive actions related to noise, suggesting that such actions should be expanded and integrate interventions of hearing health promotion within the SHP.