Effectiveness of community intervention on population's diabetes mellitus knowledge and its influencing factors

  Objective   To discuss the influence of the community intervention program on diabetes mellitus(DM)knowledge in city population in order to provide scientific evidences for designing and implementing DM comprehensive community intervention program.

  Methods   According to the method of experimental epidemiology, two city communities were chosen as intervention community and control community respectively.Since 1997, DM community intervention program were carried out, which was focus on health promotion.Through the comparison between baseline and 4 years later(2001)data on the change of DM awareness and the logistic regression analysis of related factors.The effects and influencing factors of the DM knowledge and community intervention were evaluated.

  Results   Excluding the influence of age and sex, the average score of DM knowledge questionnaire raised 1.07(3.39±1.80 vs.4.46±1.57, P < 0.01)in intervention community 4 years later.While no significant change in control community(2.97±1.84 vs.3.00±1.90, P > 0.05).The percent of people whose total score of DM knowledge was 4 and over raised form 49.3% to 66.2% (P < 0.05)in intervention community.While no signficiant change in control community.In intervention community, the raise of DM knowledge in the groups of less than 40 years old, female and low education level had especially notability.The outcome of the Logistic regression analysis showed that the influence factors were age(OR=1.022)and education level(OR=0.617).

  Conclusion   The DM community intervention program had effects on the knowledge development and maintenance in general population.The people who were old and with low education level should be the main target population in DM knowledge intervention.