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Skin sun-acne tutorial evaluation among middle- and high-school students in central New Jersey

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Background

Because of the perception that a tan is healthy and attractive, it has been difficult to educate adolescents about sun protection.

Objective

We sought to examine whether the skin sun-acne tutorial, an hour-long, hands-on educational intervention that combined acne education with sun-protection education, increased knowledge of skin care, sun protection, and acne.

Methods

In all, 1214 middle- and high-school students were taught, tested, and surveyed. Outcomes were determined based on comparing performance on a pretest and posttest.

Results

All students, regardless of sex, ethnicity, age, or race, improved significantly from their pretest to posttest scores (P < .001).

Limitations

This study only used one health educator and was restricted to public schools in central New Jersey.

Conclusions

The skin sun-acne tutorial significantly improved knowledge of skin care including knowledge of sun protection and acne among students of different grades, sexes, ages, ethnicities, and races.

Section snippets

Human participant considerations

The study was approved by our institutional review board. The school board at the study school district in central New Jersey agreed to be the site for this educational initiative. In addition, assent was obtained from each student participating in the study.

To protect student anonymity, students were randomly assigned a number for the pretest and then asked to write that same number on their posttest. Student anonymity was protected because only the student knew which number he or she was

Sample

A total of 1214 adolescents in grades 6 to 12 at 5 middle schools and 3 high schools completed the survey and pretest. Of these students, 844 also completed the posttest. The decrease in the number of posttests relative to pretests is because some of the students had to leave during the lesson and, therefore, did not have time to complete the posttest. In addition, some of the interventions were cut short for assemblies and fire drills. A description of the sample is shown in Table II. Table II

Discussion

This study has shown that SkinSAT is an effective tool for increasing knowledge about sun protection and acne. Given that the test scores of students of various sexes, ages, ethnicities, and races improved significantly from their pretest to posttest, this lesson can be administered in settings with a diverse student body. The average improvement in knowledge of 36% is greater than many previous sun-protection studies, many of which evinced no increased knowledge among participants.15

Several

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Supported by a grant from the Women's Dermatological Society (Mr Irwin).

Conflicts of interest: None identified.

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