A systematic review of health education intervention studies on sexually transmitted diseases on college students in mainland China

Abstract

Background: College students are physiologically mature adults, and sexual intercourse commonly occurs among them. However, as people’s sexual attitude has changed, a lack in sexual health education may lead to increasing rate of sexually transmitted diseases. In general, college is the last stage of students before they enter society. Hence, college is an ideal place for students to receive health education and acquire the knowledge of STD prevention and transmission.

Objective: This systematic review aimed to examine whether health education interventions can increase STDs knowledge of college students in Mainland China, by evaluating the implemented interventions in the studies.

Methods: Articles published from 2000 to 2015 were systematically searched through EMBASE, PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Inclusion and exclusion criteria were predefined for article selection. Intervention studies were included and assessed by TREND and CONSORT.

Results: Sixteen articles were included after being examined carefully. Eleven studies of the 16 articles were pre-post studies, three were non-randomized trial studies, and there were two randomized control trials. All study outcomes were measured by self-administrated questionnaires which involved awareness rate of STDs knowledge, prevention and transmission as well as knowledge of reproduction and contraception. Results of pre-post studies showed that knowledge rate of the students increased. In addition, the differences appeared to be significant between intervention groups and control groups.

Conclusion: This systematic review showed that the knowledge rate became higher after the intervention. But the intervention methods were restricted to lecturing and health education materials. The strength of the evidence of effectiveness was not strong. Therefore, diversified health education channels should be developed and evaluated to facilitate more effective interventions concerning STD prevention.