The transformation and practice of public health perception in rural areas in the early years of the People's Republic of China:from tradition to modernity.

The Communist Party of China faced many challenges, in the early years of the People's Republic of China, in terms of public health, such as scarce medical resources, rampant epidemics, and widespread feudal superstitious beliefs in rural areas. It unfolded a series of actions and regulations to improve perception and behaviors of farmers and peasants on public health, including presentations on their poor experiences to remind them of the root causes of health issues in the old society, improving their scientific health knowledge by instruction publicity and education, setting up evaluation criteria to contest on health knowledge, putting modern health knowledge into a guide which peasants could understand, implementing the system of setting up 'model examples' and making everyone a winner, and promoting the persistence of hygienic practice among the masses. This great public health practice program reshaped the perception and behavior of the public, providing historical insights for the implementation of "the Healthy China" strategy in the new era.