Activating Media for Salt Reduction

Overview

Mass media plays more and more important role in health education, especially in some chronic diseases which related closely with the behavior and habits. Past experience tells us that with the help of related health education in mass media such as newspaper articles, advertisements and videos on television, peoples can change their behaviors and habits in a short period of time. But when these educational information were stopped, peoples usually return to their original habits. Besides the national policy of the country how to improve the long-term health education in the mass media should be considered.This study hopes to seek an effective method to keep the mass media long-term focus on health education.

In this study, reporters just like researchers were in charge of the low-sodium salt intervention. Reporters are responsible for recommended objects and measure their blood pressure personally. By observing personally the change of blood pressure pre and post low-sodium salt intervention, reporters will increase their confidence and come to the conclusion that the low salt diet is an economical way to reduce blood pressure. Those reporters would share their experiment with other people including their colleagues, Hopefully, those reporters that took part in the trial would consciously keep a sustained focus to this topic, thereby retaining a long-time education in mass media.There were two interventions. One is low-sodium salt intervention and the other is informational intervention. Low-sodium salt intervention was carried out on those family members recommended by reporters, and informational intervention. Low-sodium salt intervention was only on the reporters. The evaluation criteria of low-sodium salt intervention is the blood pressure value, and the evaluation criteria of informational intervention are the numbers of related articles in certain newspaper and the awareness of related knowledges in local population.