Health professional’s knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) on air pollution / Монголын Анагаах Ухаан

ABSTRACT

Introduction@#Soum and family health care centers (primary health care centers) provide public health services to reduce the negative effects of air pollution on health. In order to decrease the risk factors due to air pollution, it is crucial for health professionals, who are providing health care services to the public, to have the knowledge, attitude and practice to give an advice for residents on how to protect their health from air pollution. The “Air pollution and child health” report from WHO recommended that responsibility of health professionals must include knowing the latest information on air pollution, doing a research, spreading the knowledge, educating families and community and learning from them as well, proposing solutions, and finding a solution for policy developers and decision makers in other sectors. Therefore, we conducted this survey with purpose to determine the long-term effects of air pollution on population psychology and lifestyle and to evaluate the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of health professionals on how to protect a health from air pollution.@*Goal@#Evaluate the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of health professionals on air pollution.@*Material and Methods@#In 2019, this study conducted a cross-sectional design and collected quantitative and qualitative data. 88.4% of (n=532) health professionals from 48 secondary health care centers (SHCC) and 64 family health care centers (FHCC), which are agents that implement UNICEF project, in Bayanzurkh, Songinokhairkhan districts and Bayankhongor aimag were participated in the survey.@*Results@#97.4% of the participants agreed that air pollution has negative effects on human health. 99.5% of participants did not know the Mongolian standard for the acceptable level of air pollutant particulate matter (PM) and 73.1% of all participants did not receive information about air quality index. 82.1% of participants regularly give prevention advice with the purpose of protecting maternal and child health from air. The participants who worked for more than 21 years and who are older than 51 years old were more likely to give advice (p<0.05). As for the reasons for not giving advice about air pollution for protecting the maternal and child health, 29.2% of participants answered the service time is not enough, and 22.9% mentioned the lack of knowledge and information. 30.5% (162) of participants were not satisfied with their skill to give an advice on how to protect maternal and child health from air pollution. 86.8% of participants indicated that they did not receive proper training on air pollution and prevention from air pollution.@*Conclusion@#There is a need to provide training and information on how to protect maternal and child health from air pollution for health professionals.