Knowledge and awareness of hand-foot-mouth disease among parents of kindergarten children / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To understand knowledge and awareness of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) and associated factors among parents of kindergarten children in urban district of Huzhou City and to provide a veference for making effective measure of health education of HFMD.@*Methods@#Self-designed questionnaire was used to investigate 851 parents from 6 kindergartens by stratified cluster random sampling.@*Results@#The overall recognition of HFMD was 8.15±3.43, and the qualified rate was 5.17%. Awareness rates of sources, transmission routes, symptoms and signs, as well as preventive measures were 34.08%, 20.80%, 3.41% and 30.32%, respectively. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that kindergarten type(B=-1.07), gender(B=0.70), age(B=-0.41), education level(B=1.60), occupation (B=-1.37) associated with awareness of HFMD (P<0.05).The top three sources of HFMD prevention and treatment were mobile messages(45.24%), kindergarten lectures (43.24%) and brochure/propaganda column(40.19%) .@*Conclusion@#The general knowledge and awareness of HFMD among parents of kindergartens children’s parents is low in urban district of Huzhou city. In order to improve the awareness and health-related behaviors among parents of kindergarten children to prevent HFMD, child care institutions and basic public health service health education programs should be relied on, to carry out appropriate health communication and intervention.