Impact of Health-Promoting Lifestyle Education Intervention on Health-Promoting Behaviors and Health Status of Postmenopausal Women: A Quasi-Experimental Study from Sri Lanka

Abstract EN

Health promotion through lifestyle education is an important measure to enhance health status of postmenopausal women (PMW).

This study evaluated the effectiveness of health-promoting lifestyle education intervention (HPLEI) on adhering to health-promoting behaviors (HPB) and enhancing the health status in a group of Sri Lankan PMW.

A quasi-experimental study was conducted with randomly selected, sociodemographic status matched, 72 PMW from two geographically separated areas in Galle District, Sri Lanka, allocated as experimental (n = 37, 54.6 ± 4.5 years) and control (n = 35, 56.5 ± 3.4 years) groups.

Education intervention focused on postmenopausal health management including lifestyle modifications was performed only for the experimental group during 8 weeks, and a health education package was provided.

The control group was not given any planned education programme.

Both groups were followed up for a 6-month period.

HPB and menopausal symptoms severity were evaluated by validated Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II and Menopause Rating Scale, respectively.

Anthropometric adiposity indices (AAIs) including weight, body mass index (BMI), waist (WC) and hip (HC) circumferences, and waist to hip ratio (WHR); cardiovascular disease risk indicators (CVDRI) including systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), fasting blood sugar (FBS), total cholesterol and triglycerides, muscle strength; hand grip strength (HGS) and physical performance (PP); gait speed (GS) were measured.

All parameters were evaluated before the intervention (baseline) and after follow-up of 6 months.

All evaluated parameters were not different between experimental and control groups (p>0.05) at the baseline.

In the follow-up evaluation, HPB (p<0.001), menopausal symptom scores (p<0.001), AAI (p<0.001), CVDRI (SBP, DBP, and FBS) (p<0.05) and HGS and GS (p<0.001) were significantly improved in the experimental group but not in the control group.

Health education intervention focused on health-promoting lifestyle modifications is effective in improving the adherence to HPB and enhances the health status in PMW.

This provides positive impact in lifestyle medicine.