Rabid Animals Prevention Program in Gila County

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effectiveness of a community-based rabies education program as a means to improve knowledge and awareness of rabies in rural, underprivileged areas. Using a non-randomized pre-test and post-test design (see Appendix A), community leaders and government officials within Gila County participated in a training on rabies prevention. Results were drawn through analyzing two education-based interventions held in Globe and Payson within Gila County. The descriptive statistics run within the Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test indicated that Question 10 was significant because it fell out of the normal distribution category for both Globe and Payson (Tables 3 and 4). The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test indicated that Question 9 was significant for both Globe and Payson because it was below the .05 significance level (Tables 5 and 6). Finally, the Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient also indicated that Question 9 was significant for both Globe and Payson since their values were below the .05 significance level. The repetition of Questions 9 and 10 being significant for each test represent that prominent sources of animals spreading rabies in Arizona and how different areas are affected by rabies in Arizona are areas for future studies to focus on. Given that the amount of knowledge gained was not consistent amongst participants nor groups, even when the population was targeted to be similar, it was concluded that education-based interventions are selectively effective at increasing knowledge and awareness of rabies.