Educational Intervention Improved Parental Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) and Adherence of Patients with Celiac Disease to Gluten-Free Diet.

BACKGROUND

Raising the knowledge level though education for a celiac disease patient's parents could improve the parent's adherence and practice and consequently recover the patient's adherence and symptoms and increase the patient's compliance.

AIM

The present study was aimed at assessing the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of parents who have children with celiac disease aged from 2 to 15 years old and the change in self-reported patient's adherence pre-/posteducational intervention.

METHOD

This intervention study was designed as a quasiexperiment with evaluation pre-/post intervention analyses. Two educational sessions were carried for the parents of CD patients. A reliable and valid questionnaire was used to assess all independent variables pre-/post intervention. The parents were asked to complete the questionnaire pre and post the education sessions. The time between the sessions was two weeks.

RESULTS

100 parents were recruited, and 40 parents participated and completed the study. Baseline parent's knowledge was significantly associated with the source of information ( value = 0.02), while the patient's adherence was associated with the onset of disease ( value = 0.04). There were significant differences in the parent's KAP and patient's adherence between pre- and posteducational intervention ( value was ≤0.001, for all variables).

CONCLUSION

Based on the results, this study suggested that the educational intervention increased the parent's KAP and improved the patient's adherence to the gluten-free diet significantly, which may lead to improvement in the celiac disease patients' health outcomes.