Determinants of Interest for the Primary-Preventive Examination

Overview

Backgrounds.
Primary prevention care requires active approach not only from the health professionals but alsofrom all individuals of the target population. People themselves have to be interested for their own health, for thepreventive examinations, for their life-style. However, the health supporting activities based on the voluntary interestare most frequently exploited by people who actually do not need it, and people of the high risks stay apart. The aimof the study was to identify major differences among those who are interested in the preventive examinations andwho are not, and answer the question whether those who declare their interest are the needful and primarily aimedpopulation.Methods and Results. Within the preventive project, 4353 parents of school-aged children in Brno were examinedusing a special questionnaire. Beside interest in examination, following criteria were questioned and analysed: age,education level, economical standard, subjective evaluation of health, occurrence of concrete health problems, familyhealth history, adequacy of the body weight (according reported height and weight), dietary habits, alcoholconsummation, smoking habits, recreation-sport activities, and selected subjective perceptions. Differences basedon concern about examination were evaluated by the comparison of studied parameters in groups formed accordingthe „interest“ and also using the logistic regression analysis. We found that the dominating determinant of concernabout the preventive examination was the interest of the family partner (harmony of interests). In the group of personswho declared their „interest“, higher education level, worse subjective evaluation of health, higher occurrence ofconcrete health problems, and higher incidence of selected diseases in the family were more frequently reported.Obversely, the number of smokers was lower in this group. Incidence of overweight persons differed according totheir sex - meanwhile more overweight women were among the „interested group“, more overweight men wereamong the „not interested“. Women in the „interested“ group consumed alcohol less frequently, men in this groupwere often more active in sports. Dietary habits as well as economical standard did not differ among the two groups.Conclusions. Though the differences among groups with different concern about examination were statisticallydifferent, they were not very pronounced. It cannot be confirmed that the preventive examination is exploitedpreferably by people without major risk factors, those socio-demografically or otherwise specific, or generally thoseto whom the proposal of examination was not aimed.

Key words:
primary prevention care, primary-preventive examination, determinants of interest.