The effect of pedestrian traffic behavior educational program on traffic behavior of health workers in Tabriz

Abstract

Introduction: Pedestrians are one of the vulnerable road users in motor vehicle crashes. Education can play an important role in changing road users’ behavior. Staff of the Ministry of Health, especially health workers, are one of the employees that involved in training healthy behavior to the community. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of the safe behavior promotion program on the traffic behavior of health workers in Tabriz. Materials and Methods: This interventional study was conducted on 82 employees working as health workers in Tabriz. The research units were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups with a 1:1 allocation ratio (block size of 6). Random Allocation was conducted using the site (http://www.random.org). In this way, out of 82 health centers in Tabriz city, 41 centers were randomly selected as the intervention group and 41 centers as the control group. One health worker was selected from each health center to conduct the study. According to the results of the pre-test, an educational intervention was designed and conducted in 4 one-hour sessions. Data were analyzed using chi-square test, paired and independent t tests in Stata version 17. Results: The average score of traffic behavior of health workers in the intervention group increased significantly (83.59±1.42 before the intervention, 84.91±1.72 after the intervention). The scores of the ajority of health workers in the intervention group were good in the subscales of adherence to traffic rules (86.84 %), violation (92.11 percent), positive behaviors (86.84 %), distraction (86.84%), and aggressive behaviors (94.74%). An increase in good behaviors was observed in the subscales of adherence to traffic rules (86.84%), violations (92.11%), and positive behaviors (86.84%) compared to before the intervention. Before the intervention, there was no significant difference in the average score of adherence to traffic rules between the intervention (75.03 ± 1.98) and control groups (74.88 ± 1.69). The average score of subscale of adherence to traffic rules of the intervention group increased significantly after the intervention (before the intervention: 75.03 ± 1.98 and after the intervention: 78.19 ± 2.14). Conclusion: Training was effective on changing the traffic behavior of health workers. Considering their ability in educating the community, health workers may play a major role in changing the traffic behavior of pedestrians.