The Contribution of Environmental and Behavioral Factors on The Occurrence of Communicable Diseases in School Children

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-760-1_31How to use a DOI?

Keywords

infectious disease; elementary school children; environmental sanitation; behavioral factors; personal hygiene

Abstract

Communicable diseases in school children vary in different countries, both in type and morbidity. The most prevalent types of diseases are infections of the respiratory tract, digestive tract, blood vessels, skin, and also teeth and mouth. The aim of this study is to determine the contribution of environmental and behavioral factors to the occurrence of communicable diseases among elementary school children in Indonesia. The cross-sectional study was conducted on the third and fourth-grade students in the thirty elementary schools belonging to the Muhammadiyah Foundation in Central Java, Yogyakarta Special Region, and West Kalimantan Provinces. As many as 10-12 students were randomly selected from each school. The disease occurrence and risk factors were collected by using structured interviews and environmental observations. Data were descriptively and analytically analyzed by using the SPSS statistical software version 16.0. In total, 46.4% of elementary school children have had an illness in the last three months with the seven highest prevalence of diseases being diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, helminthiasis, typhoid fever, skin diseases, and Dengue. The occurrence of gastrointestinal infection was associated with the density of houseflies in the canteen (p=0.006; PR=2.062; 95%CI=1.250-3.403), while the helminthiasis was associated with the untrimmed nails of students (p=0.035; PR=2.58; 95%CI=1.136-5.866). Personal hygiene and environmental sanitation affect the high occurrence of infectious diseases found among the students of private elementary schools in Indonesia. These findings provide important input in the development of evidence-based school health units.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sayono Sayono
AU  - Linda Suwarni
AU  - Rokhani Rokhani
AU  - Liena Sofiana
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/03
TI  - The Contribution of Environmental and Behavioral Factors on The Occurrence of Communicable Diseases in School Children
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd Lawang Sewu International Symposium on Medical and Health Sciences (LEWIS-MHS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 334
EP  - 347
SN  - 2468-5739
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-760-1_31
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-760-1_31
ID  - Sayono2025
ER  -