Objective: To assess the impact of the distance education course “Sickle Cell Disease: Primary Health Care Line” on knowledge acquisition of professional healthcare providers. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a quantitative approach at the Edu- cational and Support Center for Hemoglobinopathies (Cehmob-MG), state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2016. One hundred and fifty-three out of 300 professional healthcare providers were invited to participate in the proposed distance course. Of the participating professional healthcare providers, 72 (47%) successfully concluded the course (Group A), whereas 81 (53%) did not complete their course assignments and did not meet the minimum requirements for regular attendance (Group B). Knowledge acquisition was assessed with the Knowl- edge of Sickle Cell Disease Instrument, DFConhecimento, applied using the web tool eSurv. Univariate analysis by Poisson regression was employed to assess the influence of sociode- mographic variables on the DFConhecimento score and to select variables to compose the initial multivariate regression model (p-value < 0.20). The analysis was performed in the statistical programming environment R. Results: The average score was 9.76 for Group A and 6.54 for Group B. The two groups were considered statistically different (p-value < 0.05) for all items with the proportion of correct items being greater in Group A. Professional healthcare providers who concluded the course had a significantly higher DFConhecimento score (45%) when compared to those who did not successfully conclude the course. Conclusion: Participation in a distance education course on sickle cell disease had a posi- tive impact on the acquisition of knowledge about the disease by professional healthcare providers.
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