Developing and testing a One Health educational module for enabling the community engagement to prevent communicable diseases: A quasi – experimental study among high school children of Udupi Taluk

The study will be conducted in selected high schools in Udupi Taluk, Karnataka, India. A total of 144 students from government, 136 from aided, and 116 from unaided will be included in the study for training purposes. Data collection for assessing knowledge, attitude and practices about communicable diseases and One Health approach will be conducted from 1st till 9th months of this study. Groups of public health experts, various health professionals including veterinary, agriculture and environment science, and interprofessional educationists will be interviewed for developing and testing One Health educational module from the period of 10th till 15th months of this study. For implementation, five students from 10 different schools of Academy of General Education, MAHE, Manipal will be selected. One teacher will also be invited from each school during the training. Consent will be taken from parents or guardians of students for conducting this study. Selected peer educators will undergo a comprehensive training program through the One Health educational module workshop. Workshops for 3-4 hours sessions will be conducted in Manipal. Trained peer educators will conduct educational sessions for their peer learners through a half-day activity followed by continuous peer mentoring and monitoring of their behavior change over a period of 12 weeks. Both the training the trainers and peer training will be conducted during the beginning of an academic year.