Introduction: COVID-19 preventive practices constitute the most important non-pharmacological strategy to control the pandemic, especially in health science students. Objective: To identify the factors associated with the preventive practices of COVID-19 in students in the health area of three public universities in Peru. Methods: Observational and correlational study, carried out in 2020, by means of an email survey in Nursing and Human Medicine students from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Universidad Nacional Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza and the Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga. Finally, 777 students were selected by non-probability snowball sampling. The Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H tests were used; Besides, multivariate analysis was performed using Poisson regression. Results: 72.46% were female and 6.05% were diagnosed with COVID-19. 19.43% always use a face shield. The bivariate analysis reported differences in the score of the practices according to sex, age, place of residence, type of university, and type of career (p <0.05). However, the multivariate analysis reported an association between preventive practices with gender (p <0.001) and place of residence (p = 0.048). Conclusions: Sex and place of residence were factors associated with COVID-19 preventive practices in health sciences students. Prevention programs should target male students and those who live in regions with the highest incidence of COVID-19.