A study of the relation between providing healthcare information and behavior changes of people in Japan. Parental behavior changes after receiving information about the sudden infant death syndrome

OBJECTIVE: Considering the lack of evidence concerning the relationship between providing healthcare information and behavior of people in Japan, we utilized a questionnaire to survey the parents of infants to evaluate behavior change after receiving information about the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). METHODS: A questionnaire about SIDS information was administered in 234 municipalities in Niigata, Gifu, Shizuoka, and Hiroshima Prefectures and in Yokohama City in November and December of 1999 to 14,879 parents who visited for the 18-month health examination of their children. The questionnaire did not ask for the participants' names. Logistic regression analysis was used to study the connection between behavior change and SIDS information sources. RESULTS: 10,900 parents returned the questionnaire to give a 73.3% response rate, 19.0% of these receiving information about SIDS risk factors from hospitals or clinics, 3.7% from public health centers, and 9.2% from their friends. More received information from the mass media such as TV programs, which provided the main source for 71.1% of the parents. The degree of behavior change was evaluated after adjustment for variables concerning a variety of information sources and other appropriate factors such as the age and sex of parents and the number of their children. We found that receiving information from hospitals or clinics significantly influences behavior changes for all kinds of risk factors. Information from public health centers, baby-care groups, and friends influenced behavior changes relevant to the risk factors for feeding methods, sleeping position, and parents' smoking. There was no relation between receiving information from the mass media and behavior change of parents. CONCLUSIONS: The mass media provide far more information than do medical facilities, public health centers, baby-care groups and personal contacts but the latter played much more effective roles in making parents change their baby care behavior. These results point to an obvious discrepancy between efficiency in providing information and the degree of behavior change elicited. We should thus take the source of information and the target population into consideration when we examine the best way to provide healthcare information for people in the future.