Impact of an Educational Programme on Reproductive Health Among Young Migrant Female Workers in Shenzhen, China: an Intervention Study

Abstract

Reproductive health and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) account for a high proportion of health problems in the rural-to-urban young female migrant workers in China. Improving these conditions remains highly challenging. To developed an educational programme to advance the reproductive health of the female workers. An intervention study was conducted between July 2010 and April 2011 in Shenzhen. Two commune factories were selected to participate and provided a control cluster receiving routine local government health services and a second cluster receiving an educational intervention in addition to the routine services. The intervention included distribution and free access to educational study materials. The factory workers' knowledge, attitudes and behaviour in the area of reproductive health and STD were the main study outcomes. Compared with the control cluster, at the 6-month follow-up assessment, the intervention cluster had a significantly higher proportion of correct answers to queries about human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) (standardised coefficients of multiple linear regression (B) 0.047; P = 0.020) and awareness of places providing free contraceptives (odds ratio [OR] 2.011, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.635-2.472; P < 0.001), and a significantly lower proportion accepting premarital sex (OR 0.492, 95% CI 0.416-0.582; P < 0.001), practising premarital sex (OR 0.539, 95% CI 0.478-0.608; P < 0.001) or suffering from gynaecological disorders (OR 0.801, 95% CI 0.697-0.921; P = 0.002). A community-based educational intervention targeting unmarried female migrant workers appears to be effective in substantially improving their knowledge of reproductive health and their attitudes and behaviour towards health, and in reducing prevalence of STD.