Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of health education interventions on endemic fluorosis for Chinese students and housewives / 中华地方病学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness of health education interventions on endemic fluorosis for Chinese students and housewives,and to provide a basis for prevention and control of the disease.Methods A computerized literature search was carried out in CBM(Chinese Biomedical Database),CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure),Wan-fang,VIP,Pub-Med,Web of Knowledge and EBSCO to collect articles published at home and abroad between 1994-2012 concerning the effectiveness of health education interventions on endemic fluorosis for Chinese students and housewives.The study was a self-controlled intervention study.The quality of literature was evaluated using the standards of Cochrane and EPOC.Meta-analysis was performed to assess the knowledge about fluorosis prevention using Rev-Man 5.0.Homogeneous data(P ＞ 0.05) was analyzed using a fixed effects model,and heterogeneous data (P≤ 0.05) was analyzed using a random effects model.Results A total of 146 Chinese research papers and 192 English research papers were retrieved.By screening,35 Chinese research papers meet the standards.After reading the full text,6 papers were selected.English literature was not found.According to EPOC criteria all the six literatures included were grade B.Because heterogeneity of the literatures was higher,knowledge point was stratify analyzed according to the study subjects.The intervention effect of students was higher than that of the housewives.After the intervention,the fluorosis disease prevention knowledge awareness of schoolchildren and housewives were increased by 28％ and 26％.Conclusions Health education has a good effect in improving the knowledge of fluorosis for Chinese students and housewives.