Research On Status And Improving Strategies Of Rural Residents ' Health Literacy In Jurong City

Objective: In this study, the health knowledge and attitudes of rural residents, their healthy lifestyle and behavior, their health literacy skills and other health-related knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, skills were investigated at baseline, and the interventions including national health education was carried out to understand the status of health literacy and effectiveness of the interventions among rural residents in Jurong city, to evaluate the effect of national health education on health literacy. This study will provide a basis for improving strategies of the health literacy of rural residents.Methods: Stratified multistage randomized sampling method was used to select monitoring objects, on the basis of the baseline investigation by using the" 2009 China citizen health literacy questionnaire", a eight- month's intensive intervention was administered among the subjects by various health education activities including household propaganda, lecture, and media propaganda about health knowledge, and then the effectiveness of intervention was evaluated. A routine intervention was continued for one year, and comparision for holding same health literacy among subjects was conducted between two investigations to evaluate stable effect of holding health literacy, the investigation was conducted according to " 2010 China citizen health literacy questionnaire".Results: Total 518 subjects were investigated at baseline, the rate of awareness of health knowledge and beliefs raised from 50.71% from 61.56%, and the rate of health behaviors raised from 51.03% to 61.56% , some skill about public health significanly was improved, after the 8-month intervention(all P<0.05). After intervention, the literacy of health concept, communicable disease control, chronic disease control, basic medical and emergency medical treatment were significantly improved compared to that before the intervention(all P<0.05).Conclusions: Short-term intensive health education can effectively change the health concept and improve awareness rate of health knowledge among rural residents. However, for consolidation of knowledge rate, forming of healthy behaviors, grasp of health skill, long-term unremitting endeavour are need to improve effectively the citizens'health literacy.