Aim of study: To evaluate awareness regarding preventive measures of common non-communicable diseases among local population.
Materials & methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among patients attending community dental outreach pro- grams organized by the Dental Teaching Hospital over a period of 1 month.A total of 106 subjects were selected for the study who were above 18 years of age.The structured questionnaire on the awareness regarding preventive measures of common non-communicable diseases distributed among selected sample subjects. Data were collected and analyzed statistically.
Results: Majority of participants knew smoking can affect their health (91.5%), compared to (1.9%) who don’t know. Ma- jority of participants knew little about high blood pressure (67.9%), compared to (9.4%) who knew appropriate about high blood pressure. Majority of participants were aware of importance of checking blood pressure regularly (54.7%), and (47.2%) knew blood pressure should be checked more than once a month. 88.7% of the participants knew that unhealthy diets can cause heart diseases while fried foods, refined grains, high salted and sugar foods are most mentioned foods that can cause heart diseases.
Conclusion: This study revealed that, the general awareness about non-communicable diseases and its preventive measures in this local population is moderate.Therefore, there is increased need in the management of non-communicable diseas- es through different strategies like health awareness building, screening and lifestyle interventions, developing policies to address and combat non-communicable diseases and generating evidence-based research on non-communicable diseases among local population.
Factors and Early Detection of Noncommunicable Diseases Among Rural Women in India. J Global Oncol 2019;5(5):1- 10
Heal Sc.2020:2-8