Survey on iodine deficiency disorders awareness, education status and willingness of pupils in Guizhou Province / 中华地方病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To learn about the awareness, education status and willingness of iodine deficiency disorders (IDD) among elementary school students in Guizhou Province, and to provide a scientific basis for exploring intervention strategies for health education of iodine deficiency in the future.Methods:From June 2021 to May 2022, each IDD monitoring county was selected from the east, south, west, north and middle directions of Guizhou Province, and one elementary school was selected from each county. All students in two classes of Grade 5 and Grade 6 were selected in whole groups to conduct on-site questionnaire surveys in the form of anonymous examinations. The survey mainly included general demographic information and IDD awareness, education status and willingness, and binary logistic regression was used to analyze the relevant influencing factors.Results:A total of 1 259 elementary school students in Guizhou Province were investigated, the rates of awareness of IDD, acceptance of IDD publicity and education, and willingness to accept IDD publicity and education among elementary school students were 37.7% (1 900/5 036), 25.1% (316/1 259) and 69.6% (876/1 259), respectively. By binary logistic regression analysis, gender, residence, grade and father's education level were the influencing factors of pupils' awareness of iodine deficiency ( P < 0.05); residence, age and father's education level were the influential factors of elementary school students receiving iodine deficiency education ( P < 0.05); gender, residence, ethnicity and whether the child was the only child or not were the influential factors of elementary school students' willingness to accept IDD education ( P < 0.05). Conclusions:The elementary school students in Guizhou Province have insufficient knowledge about IDD. The publicity and education for iodine deficiency prevention is limited, and the students' willingness to learn is not high. The publicity, education and intervention for iodine deficiency prevention among elementary school students should be comprehensively strengthened.