Now the challenge is to increase the number of women who consume 400 mcg. As Table 1 indicates, there have been increases in knowledge and behavior since 1995, but in the past two years, the increases have been slight. The findings also clearly show that the majority of women are still getting folic acid information most frequently from magazines and newspapers. The CDC surveys were similar to the MOD survey and some of the results are listed in Tables 3 and 4. Most of the women reported that they had heard of folic acid.
Much work still needs to be done in regards to educating Spanish-speaking women about folic acid.
As indicated in Table 4, we must continue to focus on television and radio media outlets that serve the Hispanic community. It is common for health promotion campaigns to see greater increases in awareness of a health issue prior to behavior changes. While the progress towards getting the general population to change behavior is slow, every positive increment is crucial to the overall success of the campaign. These results offer us an opportunity to build on the momentum of our folic acid campaigns and to channel our creativity and resources into long-term strategies that will make folic acid consumption an everyday lifestyle habit. The purpose of the subcommittee is to monitor and report on folic acid awareness, knowledge, and behavior changes and to promote the use of such data at the state and local level as a means of evaluating and supporting NTD prevention efforts.