Effectiveness of Health Education in Ethnic Minority Communities in Rural China

Background: Globally, China is the most natural disaster prone country and its remote area population faces the highest natural disaster risk. These communities are often characterized by ethnic minority based, in extreme poverty. In China, non-Han Chinese constitutes to 8.4% of her population and generally fare worse in economic status than the Han majority. Since 2009, the health education team from the School of Public Health has been to rural villages in China to deliver health education.  Four key principles of site selection include: 1. geographic remoteness, 2. ethnic minority based communities, 3. economic deprivation (less than USD$1.25 per dollar per day per person), 4. disaster proneness, where almost no resources (knowledge or materials) are available to tackle disaster preparedness or response after natural disaster occurred.

Methods: The experience and difficulties of the health education intervention will be highlighted and compared across two sites in rural China. As of October 2011, we have already established and implemented programs in these two project sites: Origin of Yangze River and high plateau of Yellow River. For the effectiveness of health education, assessment was performed using pre and post education questionnaires. The long term sustainability of the knowledge is assessed by long term follow up of the villagers in nine months to one year period.

Results: Although we had success with the knowledge gain in a number of villagers in China with the pre and post questionnaire. The long time sustainability was found to be an issue with one of the villages in China.

Conclusions: Long term improvement in health knowledge and changes in attitude and practice require the use of different modalities of health education tool with the involvement of local villagers and the community.