Do Right, Be Bright: A Protocol on the Development of an Inter-Professional Health Intervention Model for Pre-School Children Through a Community-Based Service-Learning Initiative

Abstract

An inter-professional project with a collaborative endeavor between the programs of Dentistry, Nutrition and Medicine was carried out with the aim to emphasise oral health maintenance, making the right nutritional choices and effective hand washing among preschool children. The purpose of this paper is to share a detailed description of the design, development process, implementation, and planned evaluation of an interprofessional school-based health promotion intervention model “Do Right, Be Bright”. This model is part of a quasi-experimental study, targeting pre-school children as the “Targets of Change” through the empowerment of school teachers as the “Agents of Change”. The program design was based on Bartholomew’s Intervention Mapping Approach, which proposes a direction for developing a theory-based health promotion intervention and on the most extensively applied theories of health behavior, the Health Belief Model. Therefore, based on a thorough literature review and needs assessment, three key areas of needs were identified for the targeted preschool children: oral hygiene, hand hygiene and nutrition. The efficacy of this model will be pilot tested in a preschool in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.