Effect of virtual education on health responsibility of overweight students during the COVID-19 pandemic

The global prevalence of obesity is increasing not only in adults but also in children and adolescents. In addition to the role of genetic and biological factors, policies such as the need for quarantine during the coronavirus epidemic and the family's behavioral and socioeconomic status in causing obesity cannot be ignored. The current research aimed to investigate the effect of virtual education programs on the health responsibility of overweight students during the outbreak of the Coronavirus. This was a semi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design and a randomized control group, which was conducted in three stages)pre-intervention, intervention, and post-intervention) during 2021-22 in Tehran Province, Iran. The samples were 60 adolescent girls aged 12-18 with a body mass index higher than 25 and placed in two test and control groups through random cluster sampling. Data was collected using the demographic information profile and the 12-item health responsibility questionnaire from HPLPII. The intervention was implemented as 6 virtual training sessions of 1.5 h for the test group. After 1.5 months, BMI was measured and a post-test was done. SPSS version 22 software was used for data analysis. There was no significant change in the BMI of students after the intervention in the control group (p = 0.476), but it decreased significantly in the test group (p