This study aimed to assess the impact of a lecture on knowledge about dementia prevention conducted by pharmacy students for visitors at dementia café. A pre- and post-intervention design was used to evaluate comprehension, effectiveness, and retention of knowledge. The lecture focused on the diet and sleep regime recommended for dementia prevention. First, before the lecture, the visitors were asked to complete a written test that contained three multiple choice and four open-ended questions. The pre-test also asked questions related to a poster on the subject, to which the visitors were exposed in the café. After the lecture, a post-test was conducted with the same content as the pre-test. The analysis revealed that the post-test scores were significantly higher than the pre-test scores. Furthermore, participants took a remade test with three multiple choice and three open-ended questions. This additional test related to the questions on which the participants received low scores in the pre-test. The evaluation of the remade test was conducted over a period of four months. During all four months of the evaluation, the scores for the remade test were found to be above 75. The validity of the lecture and of knowledge retention were proved through these tests. Based on these results, it can be concluded that the lectures contributed to an increase in the knowledge of dementia prevention among the visitors at the café.

A survey of pharmacy students’ and liberal arts students’ attitudes toward identifying diseases that can be effectively prevented using genetic analysis was performed using a multiple-choice questionnaire. We defined the diseases that can be prevented using genetic analysis and found that, for these diseases, the rate of selecting “do nothing” by people with disease-related genes was significantly lower than that of people for whom the genetic influence was unknown. We found that the nine conditions that we investigated (i.e., obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, hypocholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, arteriosclerosis, cancer, and liver disease) are diseases that can be effectively prevented using genetic analysis for all students. We also observed that the most common answer for disease prevention was related to dietary changes (including drinking restrictions). In conclusion, through our unique questionnaire, we identified various diseases that can be effectively prevented using genetic analysis. However, it was found that the act of answering a multiple-choice questionnaire does not improve knowledge of disease prevention measures. Therefore, we propose that, after the questionnaire, it is important to distribute written material that explains the cause of life-style-related diseases and their prevention in order to foster knowledge about disease prevention.

In this study, we conducted test-linked lectures (using a pre-test and a poster related to the pre-test) to understand the contents of “genetic testing-related knowledge” for university festival visitors. We also assessed their level of understanding and the effectiveness of the lectures pre- and post-test, by dividing the visitors into groups according to gender, medication, and age. First, pharmacy students performed a pre-test (9 questions, each with 4 answer choices) on “flow of genetic information, protein structure and function, relation between gene and protein/living body, basic knowledge of genetic testing and sampling method” for the visitors. Second, lectures were conducted using posters that included the contents of the pre-test. Finally, a post-test was performed with the same content as that of the pre-test. The results revealed a high correct-response rate (more than 65%) for the post-test in most groups (except for some groups with visitors in their 70s). In addition, compared to the overall pre-test scores, those of the post-test showed a significant increase. Thus, we elucidated that test-linked lectures contribute to the comprehension degree improvement in visitors aged from their teens to their 60s ; the validity of lectures using pre-test and poster was also proved.