Study on health-related behavior during and after SARS epidemic

ObjectiveTo understand the difference of health-related behavior among public population during and after SARS epidemic.MethodsAquestionnaire survey was conducted in Guangzhou,Taiyuan and Hang zhou in March,2006.100 residents were sampled randomly from each of 2 neighborhood committees and 2 villages in every project city.And 400 employees were sampled from building and manufacturing industry,business and service industry,and schools in each city.2400 people in all were involved in this survey.Data was input with Epi-data 2.0,and analyszed by SPSS 11.5 software.ResultsCompared with the period of SARS,the proportion of always washing hands before eating and after latrine use was incereased from 39.6% and 54.3% to 42.8% and 58.8%,respectively.The percentage of doing exercise most of the time was decreased from 36.1% to 32.5% at the time of the investigation.The frequency of opening window for airiness and seeking for healthy information were reduced at the time of the study.Among the population who eated out often during SARS,the percentage of using public chopsticks always or at most of the time declined slightly from 12.1% and 24.8% to 11.2% and 22.7%.About 13.2% of respondents washed their hands with sterilized liquid during SARS and it dropped to 4.9%.ConclusionThe health-related behav ior of the public was improved due to SARS epidemic.The awareness of perceived risk among the public and some essential support elementincluding environment support and exterior regulation constitute should be strengthened to help the public to maintain the healthy behavior.