Objective   To examine demands for information on health education among community residents in counties or districts covered by pilot project of health education and to provide evidences for carrying out health promotion activities at different levels and for the development of health education strategy in Fujian province.

  Methods   Totally 3 350 permanent residents aged 15 – 69 years were selected from Licheng district of Quanzhou municipality, Yong'an municipality, and Wuping county with multi-stage random sampling. A face-to-face questionnaire survey was conducted among the participants between September and November 2014.

  Results   Of the participants, 69.9 % reported that they could get health information required generally and 69.1 % reported that they could judge whether the acquired key information on health is correct. The top three approaches for getting health information reported by the participants were television/broadcast (70.3 %), newspaper, books and magazines (53.2 %), and doctors or friends engaged in healthcare services (50.3 %). There were 70.7 % of the participants considering that the health information obtained from doctors or friends engaged in healthcare services are more credible and 55.6 % hopping to get health information from doctors or friends engaged in healthcare services.

  Conclusion   The capability for conducting health education should be promoted among medical workers at various administrative levels. Full use of traditional and new media should be made to improve the efficiency of health education and comprehensive health communication needs to be carried out among residents.