Impact of Awareness on the Knowledge of College Students about Lifestyle Diseases

Background & Objectives: Lifestyle diseases emerged as an important public health problem during the past few decades due to unhealthy practices adopted by the people and a definite increase in life expectancy as a result of improved living standards and control over most of the infectious diseases. These diseases account for a very major chunk of morbidity and mortality at the global level. However, they can be prevented if healthy lifestyles are adopted in early life. With this objective in mind, we started a program under the name of AASH at SKIMS. Material & Methods: One thousand three hundred and sixty nine college students were selected from different colleges of Srinagar and they were given a pretested close-ended proforma to assess the level of their knowledge about some of the lifestyle diseases. Then a series of lectures were given and their knowledge was again checked at the end by using the same proforma. Results: It was found that there was a 12,16, 65 and 12 percent increase in the level of awareness about the basic knowledge about Hypertension, Obesity, CAD and Diabetes respectively. Break up wise the impact level was also significant. Conclusion: The results showed that the level of knowledge before and after the intervention had increased very significantly. Hence such awareness programmes are needed more and more.J Med Sci.2009;12(2):58-60.