Improvement in knowledge and perception about the controlling of COVID-19: best practice of apothecary student

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been admitted by WHO as a global pandemic. The successes-ness in controlling COVID-19 is extremely affected by the knowledge and perception of society. Apothecary students must be competent in carrying out the health promotion effort;one of them is through education. Discovering the impact of education from apothecary students in improving knowledge and perception of the society in controlling COVID-19. One group Quasi-experimental design without a control group (n=102). The data was conducted in March-April 2020 using a validated questionnaire containing the respondents' demographic, knowledge, and perception of COVID-19. This research is 18 years old, does not work as a health worker/medical personnel, domiciled in Yogyakarta, and fills up the pre-test and post-test questionnaire. The data were analyzed descriptively and used the Wilcoxon test (p<0.05) as the statistic test. Most respondents are 52.9% women, 34.31% aged 36-45, with 52.94% having a high school education level. The survey result shows that 71.57% of respondents admit that they know about COVID-19 from television and 2.43% from social media. The answer distribution of questioner on knowledge and perception shows improvements in the pre-test and post-test scores. The Wilcoxon test result, the influence of education on respondents' knowledge and perception, shows the significance of p value=0.000 with the outcome of pre-test and post-test scores with the good category are 67.65% and 5.29%. The presentation of education from apothecary students significantly influences society's knowledge and perception of controlling COVID-19.