A Study of Some Socio-Economic Factors Affecting the Health Awareness of Rural Women in Assiut Governorate

Rural development is an indispensable necessity for the advancement of societies. Therefore, countries have given great attention to development projects, and the human being is considered a target and a means of the development process. Therefore, the success of any development effort depends primarily on physical integrity, health and mental health. Life and grow, it enables him to play his role in the development of his society. The responsibility for maintaining health lies with the individuals themselves. The individual can practice healthy behaviors that lead to the development of his energies and avoid contracting many physical and psychological diseases.
Health awareness is one of the important factors that help a person to enjoy good health, and the home is an ideal place for health awareness as it provides health awareness for family members and from here comes the role of women in providing health awareness at home. A woman's health awareness is considered the cornerstone of her daily behavior and health status for herself and her family members rural women still suffer from a low level of health awareness, which is reflected on her health first and the health of all members of her family. Therefore, the research was interested in studying some of the social and economic factors affecting health awareness among rural women in order to play their role in this field effectively and efficiently. The objectives of the research were to identify the level of nutritional, personal and preventive health awareness among rural women, as well as to identify the sources from which rural women derive information about nutritional, personal and preventive health awareness. The social and economic awareness of the respondents and the degree of nutritional, personal and preventive health awareness and general health awareness among rural women
To achieve these goals, the governorate was divided into East of the Nile and West of the Nile. A center was chosen randomly from each direction, so Al-Fateh center was from the east, and Manfalut center was from the west, and a village was randomly selected from each center, so the village of Al-Fima was from the Al-Fath center, and the village of Bani Rafea from the Center Manfalut and the data were collected through a questionnaire prepared for this purpose from 391 female respondents who were randomly selected from the selected villages.
One of the most important findings of the study was that the level of preventive, personal, nutritional and general health awareness of the respondents was medium to low awareness, as for the most important sources from which respondents obtained health information were educated children, television programs and personal experience, as for the mechanisms that respondents used to increase the health awareness of members of their families was not drinking contaminated water, sterilizing wounds when injured, washing hands before and after eating, not using others’ tools and eating breakfast, not staying up late and not eating from street vendors, maintaining the cleanliness of the house, encouraging family members to quit smoking, It was also found that there is a relation between the education of the respondent and each of the personal awareness, food, and general health awareness, and there is a relation between the education of the respondent’s husband and health food awareness and general health awareness, as well as the monthly income found a relationship between preventive, personal and nutritional health awareness, as the results showed. There is no relation between the respondent’s profession and both preventive and personal awareness, but there is a relation with health and food awareness, and the results indicated that there is no relation between the profession of the respondent’s husband, the respondent’s participation in family decision-making and preventive, personal, nutritional and general health awareness, as for the respondents’ participation In development projects, the results showed a relation between them and public health awareness.