Health Education in Increasing Prevention Behavior of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever in Families at Gubeng Village, Surabaya, Indonesia

Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) is the fastest spread of mosquito-borne viral disease in the world–an annual health problem in Indonesia. Efforts to prevent and eradicate DHF are focused on efforts to control infectious vectors through the Mosquito Nest Eradication movement known as 3M Plus, but community participation in preventing DHF is still low due to a lack of understanding in its importance, so that the health education is needed to improve understanding and awareness of DHF. This study aims to analyze the effect of health education on the increasing prevention behavior of DHF. This research is a type of comparative analytic research using non-equivalent control group with a quasi-experimental design. The sample of this study–72 families–are the people who lived in RT 03 RW 03 Gubeng, Surabaya, which was taken using a cluster sampling technique. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon sign rank test and Wilcoxon Mann- Whitney test with a significance level of 0.05. The results showed that there was a significant increase in family behavior in the prevention of DHF between before and after health education was carried out in the treatment group. Also, there were significant differences in family behavior in the prevention of DHF between the treatment and control groups after health education. Considering that health education has a significant influence in improving family behavior in the prevention of dengue, it is advisable to health workers in the Puskesmas to conduct health education about DHF and its prevention regularly and continuously to reduce the incidence of DHF.