Evaluation of a multi-layered health promotion approach in rural China:

Background:To explore the effectiveness of a multi-layered health promotion approach in rural China.Methods:A two-year intervention was applied to the 18 intervention rural villages while the 18 controls received standard health communication materials. Data were collected at baseline and post-intervention respectively to evaluate the effectiveness.Results:All intervention villages had developed healthy policies addressing prioritized health issues such as livestock captivity, garbage disposal, etc.; however, no healthy policies had been developed in the controls. The two-week morbidity rate and incidence of diarrhea of the intervention villages decreased to 13.4% from 18.5% (p = 0.009), and to 9.5% from 13.0% (p = 0.038), respectively, whereas no statistically significant change was found in the controls. The knowledge about hepatitis B and rabies transmission had increased significantly among the intervention villagers (hepatitis B from 27.5% to 34.4%, p = 0.005; rabies from 12.0% to 24.6%, p < 0.001) b...