Lack of health risk awareness in low-income Chinese youth migrants: assessment and associated factors

To analyze and assess health risk awareness of youth migrants in China and the factors that influence it, and to provide evidence for making health promotion interventions and decreasing health risks among Chinese youth migrants.

This was a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2009 among rural-to-urban migrants aged 15–24 years in Tianjin and Xi’an, China. A total of 1,838 youth migrants were enrolled by the stratified cluster sampling method. An anonymous questionnaire was self-administered to investigate health risk awareness. The t test and χ² test were used to analyze differences between different groups. Logistic regression analysis was used to test the influence of various sociodemographic, living condition, and occupational factors.

The smoking rate of men (66.8%) was higher than that of women (6.8%; P < 0.05), the rate of sexual intercourse in men was higher than in women (56.8 vs 27.7%; P < 0.05), and 75.7% of participants had written into medical care systems with 40.4% of them having undergone a physical examination during the last year. Only 438 of the participants (26% of 1,647) were considered to have a satisfactory level of health risk awareness [273 (32.4% of 958) from Tianjin and 165 (28.8% of 689) from Xi’an]. No significant difference was found between the youth migrant populations of the two cities. The percentage of youth migrants with a satisfactory level of health risk awareness who thought they had a good health status was higher than that with an unsatisfactory health risk awareness who thought they had a good health status (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that gender, age, education, reading the newspaper, and occupation significantly influenced on health risk awareness.

Youth migrants in China have a low health risk awareness. Combined and targeted health education interventions should be promoted to increase their health risk awareness.