Evaluating the effect of intervention on the use of respiratory protective equipment among migrant workers / 中国职业医学

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To explore the effect of intervention adherence on the use of respiratory protective equipment(RPE) among migrant workers who occupationally exposed to organic solvents. METHODS: A total of 901 migrant workers from 60 small and medium-sized enterprises exposed to organic solvents in a district of Guangzhou City were selected as study subjects using three-arm cluster randomized controlled trial. The enterprises were divided into control group, intervention group, and combined intervention group. Migrant workers in the control group did not receive any intervention, while migrant workers in the intervention group received traditional health education and mobile health(mHealth) intervention, and migrant workers in the combined intervention group received interventions of the intervention group plus peer education. The use of RPE by the migrant workers was evaluated in these three groups in the last week, and at the sixth month. RESULTS: The adherence rates of the three mHealth intervention measures(following the WeChat official account of the project, joining the WeChat/QQ group of the project, and reading the provided messages from project team) in the combined intervention group were higher than that in the intervention group(74.8% vs 53.6%, 70.7% vs 41.8%, 78.5% vs 65.0%, all P<0.01). In the two intervention groups, the adherence rates of traditional health education(attending occupational health training, and browsing public welfare posters) were higher than that of mHealth intervention and/or peer education(all P<0.01). Logistic regression analysis showed that regardless of mHealth intervention, traditional health education or peer education, the high compliance subgroups of the two intervention groups were more likely to wear RPE all the time(all P<0.05) compared with the control group. The intervention effectiveness of the combined intervention group was better than that of the intervention group. CONCLUSION: Improving compliance with occupational health education interventions can promote the use of RPE among migrant workers. The implementation of peer education is beneficial to improve intervention compliance and intervention effect of migrant workers.