Changes of awareness of tuberculosis and access to tuberculosis-related information among students in Zhejiang Province in the year of 2014 and 2018 / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To explore the changes of awareness of tuberculosis and access to tuberculosis-related information among students in Zhejiang Province.@*Methods@#There were 554 students younger than 30 y were included in the study during April to sept. of 2014 and during sept. to Nov. of 2018. Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression were conducted to find the related factors of knowing about tuberculosis and related knowledge. Chi-square test was used to analyze the changes of ways access to tuberculosis-related information.@*Results@#There were 440 participants (79.4%) aware of tuberculosis, including 215(85.7%) in 2014 and 225(74.3%) in 2018. The factors affecting awareness on tuberculosis were female ( AOR=1.60, 95%CI =1.04-2.47) vs male; and junior middle school( AOR=1.99, 95%CI =1.03-3.85), high school( AOR=3.27, 95%CI =1.57-6.81), college or higher ( AOR=6.73，95%CI =2.55-17.76) vs primary school or lower; year 2018 ( AOR=0.50, 95%CI =0.31-0.80) vs 2014. There was no significant statistical difference in the overall knowledge scores of tuberculosis between the students in the two surveys. In 2018, the proportion of tuberculosisrelated information accessed from the Internet (forum, WeChat, Weibo.) and community activities (assembly promotion)(75.10%, 26.70%) was higher than that of 2014(36.20%, 13.10%)( χ 2=68.88, 12.79, P <0.05).@*Conclusion@#The proportion of students aware of tuberculosis and TB control in Zhejiang Province were not significantly improved. Higher proportion of students get tuberculosis-related information from the new media. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen health education of tuberculosis in schools, especially through the usage of new media apart from traditional pathways.