Development and Application of a Health Promotion Program for Marriage Immigrant Women

Abstract

Purpose: This study was to develop a health promotion program for marriage immigrant women and to evaluate its efficacy. Methods: The health promotion program was comprised of eight 100-minute weekly sessions. Each session included understanding of health responsibility, nutrition, physical activity, interpersonal relations, stress management, and self actualization. The research was conducted under the principles of nonequivalent control group pretest-post test design. The outcome variables were health promoting behavior, health status, acculturation, self efficacy, and perceived barrier. The participants were 15 immigrant women in the experimental group and 16 in the control group. Data was analyzed using x 2 test, Fisher's exact test, Mann Whitney U-test and Wilcoxon signed rank test. Results: There was a significant improvement in health promoting behaviors (U=-3.08, p=.002), left shoulder flexibility (U=-3.02, p=.003), right shoulder flexibility (U=-3.02, p=.003), low back flexibility (U=-3.37, p=.001), social health status (U=-3.38 p=.001) and subjective health status (U=-2.17 p=.030) in the experimental group compared to the control group. Conclusion: The health promotion program for marriage immigrant women was an effective intervention for improving health promoting behavior, physical health status, social health, and subjective health status. Therefore, the developed health promotion program needs to be applied to married immigrant women in other kinds nursing care settings in future research.