Street Literacy as an Effort to Improve Healthy Behavior of Street Teenagers: Is it effective?

Abstract

Background: Street teenagers are one of the groups vulnerable to health problems. It is evident from basic health research that smoking behavior has started since the age of 10 years, with 13.4% of adolescents having used cigarettes regularly every day and 9.63% of adolescents already familiar with alcohol. Street teenagers with all their limitations are required to help the family's economy and must be willing to share time between work and study or play in accordance with their developmental tasks. If this is allowed, then Indonesia will lose so many potential young generations in the future. Street literacy by providing reading sources about health for street teenagers and mentoring is expected to increase the enthusiasm of street teenagers to care about their health, so that the adaptive behavior of teenagers can increase. Objective: This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of street literacy on increasing healthy behavior in an effort to prevent the health problems of street teenagers. Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental with a pretest and posttest with one group design. The research was conducted by implementing street literacy activities for three months starting July-September 2021. The sample of this research was 60 street teenagers, from the Akur Kurnia halfway house in Jakarta and the Ahmad Dahlan halfway house in Yogyakarta. The research variable is the independent variable: street literacy which is oriented to cognitive and behavioral development, while the dependent variable is the behavior of street teenagers towards preventing teenager health problems which includes knowledge, attitudes, and skills or actions of street youth towards health prevention. Data analysis in this study used the paired sample test. Result: the application of street literacy can increase the knowledge (p=0.000), attitudes (p=0.000) and skills (p=0.000) of street teenagers in health prevention. Conclusion: street literacy is effective in improving the health behavior of street teenagers.
 Keywords: Street literacy, street teenagers, health behavior