ASSOCIATION BETWEEN ATTITUDES TOWARD HEALTH PROMOTION AND OPINIONS REGARDING ORGAN TRANSPLANTS IN JAPAN

Health promotion activities to educate the public about healthy lifest yles have been performed widely in industrialized countries where chro nic adult diseases have become prevalent. According to a basic princip le of health promotion activities, the symptoms of many diseases are r egarded as the result of inadequate health behavior, curable by modify ing health behavior. It is thus possible that an exposure to health pr omotion activities might instill negative attitudes towards organ tran splants, because program participants may conclude that persons who ne ed an organ transplant have become unhealthy as the result of their ow n poor health habits. In this study, two types of surveys were underta ken to test this hypothesis. The subjects of the first cross-sectional study were 712 male and female Japanese citizens, and those of the se cond case-control study were 240 female company employees in Japan. In the first study, a logistic regression analysis was used and the foll owing findings were obtained. (1) Compared with the persons who felt t hat they did not have enough practical knowledge about individual heal th practices, those who felt that they had adequate knowledge were 0.6 6 times less likely to support organ transplants. (2) Compared with th ose who were not willing to spend money on healthful things, the perso ns who were willing to do so were 0.51 times less likely to support or gan transplants. In the second case-control study, it was revealed tha t the subjects who had negative attitudes towards organ transplants ha d consistently healthier lifestyles than did those who had positive at titudes towards organ transplants. Based upon the present findings and the nature of the basic principles of health promotion activities. we infer that community health promotion activities have a negative infl uence upon citizens' opinions of organ transplants. Since these findin gs have health policy implications, more studies are necessary to conc lusively evaluate the effects of health promotion activities upon atti tudes toward organ transplants. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.