. Hamid Joveini; . Alireza Rohban; . Parisa Askarian; . Mina Maheri; . Masoumeh Hashemian
Volume 9, Issue 12 , December 2019, , Pages 1-8
Abstract
AIMS: Improvement of general health literacy is one of the ways to achieve the desired publichealth condition. To this end, the first step is to determine the health literacy level ...
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AIMS: Improvement of general health literacy is one of the ways to achieve the desired publichealth condition. To this end, the first step is to determine the health literacy level and its associateddemographic factors in individuals.SETTINGS AND DESIGN: This study was a cross‑sectional, descriptive‑analytic survey conductedon 700 adults (age range: 18–65 years) in Bardaskan, Iran. The required samples were selectedvia random cluster sampling method.SUBJECTS AND METHODS: The demographic questionnaire was used to collect sociodemographicinformation. The Health Literacy for Iranian Adults questionnaire was used to determine the level ofhealth literacy in participants.STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software version 20 throughdescriptive and inferential statistics. Results were considered statistically significant at P ≤ 0.05.RESULTS: A total of 700 participants with a mean (standard deviation) age of 31.25 (9.32) yearsparticipated in this study. The primary sources of health information were physicians and healthstaff (50.9%) followed by the Internet (19.7%). The health literacy level of 18.1% of the participantswas inadequate, 27.7% was marginal, 39.4% was adequate, and 14.7% was excellent. The meanoverall scores of health literacy and its subscales were within the adequate range (66.1–84.0). Therelationships of health literacy level with age, education, marital status, occupational status, andhistory of disease were statistically significant (P < 0.001).CONCLUSION: It seems necessary to design and implement a variety of educational programs toimprove the general health literacy of the citizens of Bardaskan. Educational programs need to focuson groups with higher priority such as elderly people, individuals with lower educational levels, widows/widowers and divorced/separated individuals, unemployed and retired individuals, homemakers, andindividuals with a history of disease.
