Educational intervention for the prevention of occupational neck pain: protocol of randomized trial

BACKGROUND: Neck pain is one of the most common work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). It has important social and economic consequences such as reduced productivity due to absenteeism, leave, and early retirement and financial losses due to medical expenses for the workforce especially teachers. This study aims to evaluate whether a model-based social media intervention could change the high-risk behaviors that cause work-related neck pain among teachers. METHODS: This is a randomized controlled trial that will be done in three steps. The first stage is a qualitative study to obtain the items and areas of the researcher-made questionnaire based on the health belief model (HBM), the second stage is the psychometric evaluation of the questionnaire, and the third stage is designing and implementation of model-based educational intervention in social media context. The study population is teachers who working in junior high school in the 19th district of education minister in Tehran, Iran, which are randomly divided into two groups of intervention and control. The intervention group receives training packages on social media, and the control group does not receive any training. The educational intervention tries to improve the knowledge, attitude, skills, and self-efficacy in adopting neck pain prevention behaviors among teachers. The study will also assess whether the intervention can promote preventive neck pain behavior among teachers. DISCUSSION: Work-related neck pain can have a negative impact on teachers’ health. This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of developed interventions in promoting preventive behavior regarding work-related neck pain through social media context. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Iranian registry of Clinical Trial (IRCT) IRCT20210301050542N1. Registered on 16 March 2021 Ethics code: IR.MODARES.REC.1399.163