Investigation Of The Health Knowledge Of Rural Residents And Health Education Strategy Study In Tengzhou City

Objective Health education, an important component of public health system, is facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. In rural populations, the self-health care consciousness was weak, the health knowledge and the healthy behaviors formation were at low levels. The aim of this study was to investigate the rates of the health knowledge understanding and the healthy behaviors formation in rural population, analyze its related factors and understanding the changes from 2001 to 2007, so as to take effective measures to improve the general health level of rural residents and provide scientific basis for health education development and optimizing the allocation of health resources.Methods Focus group discussion and questionnaire survey were conducted among rural residents in 4 towns. All questions were asked and filled by interviewers individually. the health knowledge understanding and the healthy behaviors formation were described in percentage. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyze the related factors.Results and conclusion There was a higher understanding of the communicable diseases control and prevention and child health care. Otherwise, there was a lower understanding of the chronic non-communicable diseases control and prevention and emergent events control. The rate of the health knowledge understanding of rural residents was 50.38%, which was low, though it has been improved as compared with the 2001. The formation rate of the healthy behaviors was also low. Especially, the importance of health education in non-communicable diseases control and prevention should be emphasized to help rural residents to form healthy behaviors. The professional qualities were low in primaty health education staff. There were no full-time health education personnels. And the part-time personnels lacked health education training, so the health education service work could not be conducted effectively. The results of Logistic regression showed that the rural residents' interest in health issues was the protective factor for the rate of the health knowledge understanding, as well as the rate of the healthy behaviors formation. Among the six ways of hygiene knowledge promotion, television and broadcast were best accepted by the rural resedents, which were followed by newspaper, lectures, booklets and face to face education among family members. Health education was not a priority task among local activities, which resulted in little investment in it. So rural health education seriously lagged the economic development and rural residents' demand. Problems such as simplicity and crudeness of health education materials, irregularity and non-standardization of health lectures, etc, existed. Health education was lack of the overall plan to coordinate the rural health education development. So health education could not be effectively and sustainably carried out.Policy suggestions This survey revealed that five measures should be emphasized to improve the general health level of rural residents. First, the mechanism of government leading with multi-section cooperation and community involvement is the guarantee of successful implementation of the health education and health promotion in rural residents. Second, cooperation and coordination between public health section and news media should be strengthened. Third, It is important to strengthen training for part-time personnels. Fourth, social mobilization and community involvement should be used as an important approach to effectively improve the effect of health education activities.Fivth, a stable and sustainable financing mechanism should be established to strengthen the health education work in rural populations.