Abstract: Objective To investigate the knowledge rate and health behavior of diabetes mellitus among residents of Yinchuan city for conducting health education and health promotion in communities.Methods With stratified random sampling,residents elder than 20 years in two communities of Yinchuan were selected and investigated.Results Atotal of 1.084 eligible questionnaires were collected with an anwser rate of 95.76%.Only 12.73% of respondents anwsered all six questions about diabetes correctly.There was nosignificant difference in diabetes knowledge rate between participants of different age.There were significant differences in effects of diet and phy sical excercise on diabetes between male and female(P=0.037).Conclusion The residents of Yingchuan city have low knowledge rate of diabetes and the situation needs to be improved.