An epidemiological study regarding role of television about health awareness in rural and urban areas of district, Amritsar, Punjab, India

• Published in: International Journal Of Community Medicine And Public Health Vol. 4; no. 2; p. 451
• Main Authors: Gupta, Raghav, Mahajan, Sanjeev, Singh, Tejbir, Deepti, Shyam S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 25.01.2017
• ISSN: 2394-6032; 2394-6040
• DOI: 10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20170271

Background: Television is not only a source of entertainment but also a major source of information including that related to health content. So this study was conducted to know the role of television in awareness about health programs and their utility.Methods:In this cross-sectional study, 1000 respondents (500 urban and 500 rural) were studied in 5 rural and 5 urban from field practice area of Government Medical College, Amritsar. They were interviewed with the help of pretested and semi-structured questionnaire.Results: Almost all the respondents had watched television with 94% respondents in rural and 100% in urban. Those respondents who did not watched were due to non availability of television sets. Majority 3/4 of the respondents spent half to 2 hour per day watching television. Almost 2/3 of total respondents were aware about health related programs being shown on television and out of these 79.00% were actually watching these programs. 42.16% respondents were aware about health related advertisements. Respondents using these products 91.20% followed through self awareness whereas 8.80% were motivated by someone.Conclusions:Television viewing is almost a universal phenomenon but still in areas where it is more needed very few were being aware about health related content being shown on television and even those who were aware were not watching these programs.