Does high school health education class satisfaction influence student perceptions of public health and pandemic response?

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected high school students. Little is known about the mediators of student perceptions of infection prevention and public health entities. We piloted a survey to evaluate the relationship between student perceptions of COVID-19 topics and satisfaction with their most recent health class.

Methods: Students from one private high school in southeast Michigan completed a survey in early 2022. The primary outcomes were 4 domains: vaccination knowledge, intervention effectiveness, intervention impact, and willingness to readopt an intervention. We assessed the associations between health class satisfaction and these outcomes using multiple linear regression.

Results: One-hundred ninety students reported their health class satisfaction and were eligible for analysis. Students reported high confidence in vaccines (93%) but limited knowledge of COVID-19 vaccination (45%). Students perceived COVID-19 interventions as highly effective (range, 72% [hand hygiene]-93% [vaccination]) and reported a willingness to readopt them (range, 73% [stay-at-home orders]-96% [vaccination]). Health class satisfaction (54%) was positively associated with composite scores on vaccination knowledge and intervention effectiveness.

Discussion: Assessing students' intrapandemic perspectives on infection prevention illuminated areas of strength (ie, intervention confidence) and areas for improvement (ie, intervention knowledge and institutional confidence).

Conclusions: Students reported favorable perceptions regarding common infection prevention interventions. Future work should investigate the role of educational satisfaction in mediating confidence in public health interventions and institutions.