Community-Based Risk Communication Survey: Risk Prevention Behaviors in Communities during the H1N1 crisis, 2010

Kim, Soo Jeong; Han, Jin A.; Lee, Tae-Yong; Hwang, Tae-Yoon; Kwon, Keun-Sang; Park, Ki Soo; Lee, Kyung Jong; Kim, Moon Shik; Lee, Soon Young

The WHO emphasized that hand washing is a very important action that can control the prevalence of influenza [12] . A recent randomized trial showed that a combination of facemasks and hand hygiene among the contacts of influenza cases reduces transmission within 36 hours of the onset of symptoms [13] . In our study, 70.3% of respondents said that during the H1N1 pandemic they washed their hands with soap more often than usual, 19.2% said that they often cleaned frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs, 22% said that they reduced their use of public transport, and 31% said that they avoided crowded places. Our participants also showed a high level of behavioral compliance, i.e., they put what they said into practice. In a cross-sectional telephone survey spanning the UK, only 28.1% of respondents said that they washed their hands with soap more often than usual during the H1N1 pandemic, whereas 17.3% responded that they often cleaned frequently touched surfaces such as doorknobs, and only 3.7% said that they avoided crowded places [8] . In our study, 2679 (77.4%) respondents said that they put at least one of the eight preventive actions into practice ("strongly agree" or "tend to agree") and 275 (7.9%) said that they performed all eight actions. In the UK-based study, 4.9% of respondents performed at least one of six avoidance behaviors and 37.8% performed at least one of three recommended behaviors [8] . The results of that study differed from ours in that most of their respondents (62.0%) said that they did not perform any of the preventive actions. The discrepancies between the two study results can be first explained by ethnic differences in the study populations. Although our study population was all Korean and thus difficult to compare with other ethnicities, the UK-based study made a distinction between white and other ethnicities. Although most of their respondents were white (92.6%), the people in the "other" category were 3.2 times more likely to put the recommended behaviors into practice, and 4.1 times more likely to carry out avoidance behaviors than the white respondents. Second, there is a difference in the survey methods used between the two studies. Our study was based on face-to-face interviews and the study in the UK was based on telephone interviews. Third, considering that all of the studied countries conducted extensive nationwide campaigns about the recommended behaviors, the differences between the two results may be partly explained by differences in perceived effectiveness and anxiety between [14] . During the H1N1 epidemic in Hong Kong, only 26.8% of respondents believed that they might become infected with the virus [10] . Similarly, a study showed that although 43% of respondents thought that becoming infected with the H1N1 influenza would severely affect their health, only 21% of them thought that they might become infected [14] . In our study, although 33% of respondents thought that becoming infected with the H1N1 influenza would severely affect their health, a comparatively high 54% of the respondents believed they might become infected.