<![CDATA[Background: Personal hygiene is a fundamental healthy-living behavior that should be established during school age to prevent infectious diseases. A preliminary study at SD Negeri 060831 Medan revealed that 63% of students did not wash their hands with soap, 47% did not brush their teeth twice daily, and 40% neglected nail and hair hygiene. Conventional lecture-based education was considered insufficient, indicating the need for a more engaging approach such as visual storytelling. Objective: To analyze differences in personal hygiene behavior (knowledge, attitude, and practice) before and after visual storytelling education among school-aged children. Methods: A pre-experimental study with one-group pretest-posttest design. All 50 students of grades III–V were included through total sampling. Instruments consisted of a 20-item knowledge questionnaire (Guttman scale), a 20-item attitude questionnaire (Likert scale), and a 20-item practice observation checklist (Likert scale), previously validated with Cronbach’s α of 0.81, 0.75, and 0.71 respectively. Bivariate analysis used the Paired Sample t-test. Results: The proportion of respondents in the good category increased for knowledge (40.0% to 56.0%), attitude (56.0% to 58.0%), and practice (40.0% to 78.0%). Statistical tests demonstrated significant differences for knowledge (p = 0.001), attitude (p = 0.005), and practice (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Visual storytelling education is associated with improvements in personal hygiene behavior among school-aged children across knowledge, attitude, and practice domains. This method may serve as an alternative health-promotion medium to support the School Health Program (UKS) in primary schools.]]>
