[Status of knowledge and behaviors about chronic diseases prevention for Chinese residents in 2008]

To learn the status of knowledge and behaviors about chronic diseases prevention for Chinese residents, and to provide basis for developing health education strategy.

Using multi-stage stratified random cluster sampling, 79 542 residents aged 15-69 years old from 31 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps in Mainland China were investigated with the questionnaire of chronic diseases prevention.

There were 78 429 valid questionnaires recovered. The effective questionnaire return rate reached 98.60%. For some questions such as how to face second hand smoking, diseases types caused by second hand smoking, milk daily intake, drink daily intake for adult and the correct cognition to weight control, the correct rates were all below 30%. There were only 3.87% respondents possessed knowledge and behaviors about chronic diseases prevention. The proportion possessed knowledge and behavior about chronic diseases prevention of the urban population was higher than that of the rural population. The proportion of respondents aged from 35 to 45 was higher than that of other respondents. The higher were educational levels, the higher was the proportion. These differences had all statistical significance (P < 0.01).

The proportion possessed knowledge and behavior about chronic diseases prevention of respondents was low, especially to some specific prevention measurement such as how to control salt daily intake. In future, different health education strategies about chronic diseases prevention should be developed for different population.