ArticlePublic health in practice (Oxford, England)2026
Evaluation of a hand hygiene intervention in two primary schools using UV-based feedback and AI-assisted image analysis.
Article in Public health in practice (Oxford, England), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Objectives: Hand hygiene prevents infectious diseases in schoolchildren, but objective assessment of technique remains largely unexplored in school settings. The aim of the present study is to evaluate a school-based intervention on hand hygiene in primary schools. Study design: We conducted a controlled school-based community intervention study with school-level allocation, using a before-after repeated-measures design in two primary schools in Tarragona, Spain. Methods: A total of 126 children aged 8-12 years participated (64 intervention, 62 control). The intervention combined a 30-min session on the 7-step alcohol-based hand rub technique with feedback using fluorescent hand rub and a custom UV device. Hand hygiene quality was measured at baseline and at 1, 3, and 6 months as the proportion of total hand surface area adequately covered, including the palmar and dorsal surfaces of both hands. Images were analysed using an artificial intelligence-assisted tool to support more standardised outcome assessmentLongitudinal effects were analysed exploratorily with a beta mixed-effects regression model. Results: Adjusted hand coverage was similar between groups at baseline. At 1 month, both schools showed increased adjusted coverage. From 3 months onwards, trajectories diverged. The intervention school showed higher adjusted coverage than the control school at 3 months (adjusted mean difference 0.031; 95% CI: 0.010-0.052) and 6 months (0.041; 95% CI: 0.021-0.061). Conclusions: This exploratory study suggests that combining structured hand hygiene education with immediate UV visual feedback may contribute to sustained improvements in hand hygiene technique in primary school settings. The AI-assisted image-analysis workflow supported partial standardisation of outcome assessment, although the fluorescence-detection step required human supervision.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.