Evaluation of Health-promoting Lifestyles in Iranian students during the COVID-19 Epidemic: An Observational Study

This research was conducted with the aim of examining the health-promoting lifestyles of a specified student population in Iran.

The occurrence of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused changes in mental health and lifestyle. Clinical students were one of the groups with the most clinical exposure and thus were potentially most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among students of Jiroft University of Medical Sciences (JMU) in the south of Iran, who were studying in the clinical field in 2021. A consecutive sample of 200 students was used for the study. Data was collected using the Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP) Questionnaire of Walker et al., the total score of the questionnaire includes a range of at least 52 points up to a maximum of 208 points. For all statistical analysis, SPSS version 26 was used. The significance level of the p-value was less than 0.05.

The mean score of total students in the lifestyle promotion of health was 129.11 ± 12.11. The highest average score was in the field of spiritual growth (24.97 ± 5.19) and the lowest score was obtained in the field of physical activity (5.17 ± 16.32). The highest average score was in nursing students.

The present study showed that the level of health-promoting lifestyle among clinical students of JMU is at a moderate level indicating that promoting this lifestyle is an urgent global need, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.