| Background: Indoor Air Pollution(IAP) is one of the main environmental factors which are risky to health. 4% of the global disease burden attributes to IAP, which is in the same level as the diseases caused by tobacco. In rural areas of China, IAP is mainly caused by unproper and inefficient use of low-quality energy in cooking and warming system, such as bio-fuels (include firewood, dryed feces of animals, straws etc) and coal. Bio-fuels can give up a lot of harmful substance, including PM10 and PM2.5, which are risky factors of respiratory diseases, especially for cancer. A great deal of contamination can be released to the air because of incomplete combustion of the fuels. That is more serious in winter. There are still 60-90% of people use bio-fuels in developing countries, estimated by World Resource Institute. In China, bio-fuels such as low quality coal, firewood, dry feces of animals and stalk, is the main fuel of the people in rural areas which consist of 62.3% of the whole population. The health status of peasants is a determinative factor to the total health level of the whole country. Some research in the poor rural areas in western China shows that the peasants know little about the quality of indoor air. The poor habitation, low quality coal and incomplete combustion is the main risky factors to the health of the family, especially to women and children. But the most present research about IAP aims at city, and the research about the IAP in rural areas, especially in poor rural areas is few. Gansu Province is one of the largest agricultural province in China. Bio-fuel is the main fuel in its rural area. It has practical significance to study the IAP there and explore the methods to prevent it.Objective:Our project is to understand the cognition and behavioralintention of the peasants about IAP through the survey, and definite thebehavioral factors which mostly affect lAP-related diseases. We also have analyzed the main behavioral factors and its influencing factors according to the PRECEDE Model and Health Belief Model (HBM), and explore the strategies to prevent IAP in the rural areas.Method: Nonrandomized sampling. Choosing Huixian County as our research spot, where have a large population and the main fuel is bio-fuel, such as firewood, stalk, etc. Indoor questionnaire survey to 494 peasant housewives.Results: Village people (housewives) have a low acknowledgment about IAP. They have certain perception of the harmfulness about it, but they have some wrong understanding about IAP. For example, they don't think that smoking and second hand smoking can do harm to health. We have done health education diagnosis through PRECEDE Model and found that IAP in rural areas relates not only to their inhabitation environment and demographic characteristics, but to their acknowledgment and related behaviors about IAP. The risky behaviors include whether they eat in the cooking room, whether they use firepan as warm facilitate in winter. Risky behaviors are influenced by acknowledgment, environmental and demographic factors. According to the analysis by Health Belief Model (HBM), We found that cognitive factors that have influence on risky behaviors include perceiving the severity of IAP, Meanwhile, these cognitive factors are also affected by educational level and the IAP knowledge factors.Conclusion: We have put forward certain health education strategies against all the influence factors. These strategies include: social mobilization, establish health education network, propagate IAP knowledge in a large scale, enhance their cognition of IAP, teach them techniques of IAP prevention, promote the formation of the behavioral intention of reducing IAP, reduce and avoid risky behaviors as much as possible.
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