ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To understand ways of life among poverty-stricken farmers from western areas of China. METHODS: Questionnaires on ways of life were designed, using cluster random sampling method to study 5516 rural residents, aged 15 - 69, from 84 administrative villages, 42 project townships and 16 project counties in Shanxi and Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang provinces. RESULTS: 5343 valid questionnaires included 2178 males and 3165 females, with the average age as 43.4 years old. 2965 people were with minority ethnicities and another 2378 were Hans. Most of the respondents had received junior high school (37.7%) or primary school (32.1%) education with 62.1% of the respondents working in the agricultural areas. The overall smoking rate among them was 22.4%. The rates of smoking in males in Qinghai and Shanxi provinces were obviously higher than those in other provinces, with the highest seen in Shanxi. The overall rate of alcohol intake was 13.9%, and the highest seen in Shanxi and Qinghai. The alcohol intake in males was higher in Shanxi and Qinghai, than in other provinces while in female it was significantly lower in Shanxi than in the other three provinces. The health related habits were different in the four provinces, including the amount of weekly intake of milk or dairy products, fresh vegetables, bean products, animal viscera, fried food, pickled or smoked food products and livestock meat, with statistically significant differences. CONCLUSION: Life styles of farmers living in the poverty-stricken areas in Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi and Xinjiang were different. Strategies related to the real situation on each province need to be developed which would include effective health education and with the aid of '12320 hotline services' to help the residents build up a healthy lifestyle.
