Health knowledge of lodge middle school students in east of Inner Mongolia (Keyouqianqi)

―Comparasion of urban and rural―

Abstract

　A boarding school is the main place learning and living for many middle school students in eastern Inner Mongolia. Especially for 1st year junior high-school students, learning about health and developing good self-care habits has become an important part of the boarding school education. This paper surveyed 727 1st year students from 7 boarding schools in Keyouqianqi of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Students answered a questionnaire about their health knowledge to measure the effectiveness of the school health curriculum. Urban students passed 10 topics at 90% or above, while rural students correctly answered 5 topics at this rate. Among these topics, urban and rural students shared 4 topics: hand washing to prevent cold transmission, shelf life of food, emergency number, timely medical treatment. They differed in one topic; urban students were well-versed in fire response, and rural students were concerned about the psychological problems. Among the 8 topics with a pass rate below 60%, urban and rural students shared 7 (normal value of body temperature, diseases due to contaminated drinking water, diseases caused by passive smoking, pest-borne diseases, proper distance for reading and writing, daily salt intake, and rapid weight loss). 1 item differed; treatment after dog and cat bites for urban students, the normal value of pulse for rural. These differences in awareness reflect the differences in urban and rural students’ life experience and environment. A statistical comparison showed that urban students had a higher pass rate than rural students in 13 items (P < 0.05): hand washing to prevent cold transmission, shelf life of food, fire response, vaccinations, elimination of indoor air pollution, annual health examination, AIDS transmission routes, healthy lifestyle, smoking, tuberculosis, normal value of pulse, diseases due to contaminated drinking water, and rapid weight loss. Rural students had a pass rate higher than urban students in 4 topics (P < 0.05): receiving injections when ill, dietary changes instead of drug treatment, treatment after dog and cat bites, proper distance for reading and writing. The closed management of rural boarding schools may restrict students’ access to health knowledge, and the difference in urban and rural students' health awareness may be related to their different living environments.