Conhecimento dos Agentes Comunitários de Saúde sobre Hepatites Virais antes e após palestras.

The objectives were to identify the knowledge of community health workers (CHW) about viral hepatitis (VH), to verify whether lectures improve these knowledge and to check for any association between CHW knowledge and years of practice and previous educational training. In this cross-sectional study, 674 CHW, from six municipalities in the state of Espirito Santo (Southeast Brazil), answered a questionnaire about VH before and after lectures concerning this issue. Scores of the questionnaires and the proportions of correct and wrong answers, before and after lectures, were compared by Wilcoxon and McNemar test, respectively. The association of knowledge with years of experience and previous educational training was explored by Mann-Whitney test. The p value was set at 0.05. CHW presented low levels of knowledge about VH before lectures; these levels increased after lectures; and there was no association between CHW knowledge about VH and years of practice or previous training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]