| BackgroundHealth literacy is "the degree to which individuals can obtain, process, and understand the basic health information and services they need to make appropriate health decisions." As a new idea and strategie for the future work of health education and promotion, health literacy has been paid more attention by WHO and many countries. It’s an important index to evaluate the level of medical and health services.In 2008, the previous Ministry of Health released a report:"Chinese citizen health literacy-basic knowledge and skills (Trial Edition)", which is the first government document to make a comprehensive definition about the basic contents of health literacy around the world. It also remarks a beginning of the work related to health literacy and research in China. The first Chinese national residents’health literacy survey was launched by the former State Ministry of health in August,2008. The statistical results showed that the health literacy of residents in China was low, only accounted for 6.48%. After this survey, the survey plan, questionnaires, evaluation index system and the standardized question bank had been further researched and improved. In 2012, the "residents’health literacy level" promotion as a key task was listed in two 12th five-year health development plan. Meanwhile, the third national health literacy survey as an important part of health promotion had been launched. From 2012, this project would be implemented every year, which symbolized that the monitor of health literacy is stepping into a more standardized and normalized road.ObjectivesThe purpose of this study is to grasp the overall level and the sub-level of various dimensions of health literacy of residents in different areas or different characteristic groups in Gansu Province in 2013, and to analyze the key factors affecting the residents’ health literacy, and to find the main contents of intervention work and the recognize the vulnerable group. It is expected to provide basic groundings to make policies and measures to improve the residents’health literacy level.MethodsIn this study, the multi-stage stratified cluster random sampling method is used to choose the survey samples, which are 2160 permanent between 15 and 69 years old in Chengguan District of Lanzhou City, Qinzhou District of Tianshui City, Suzhou District of Jiuquan City, Gaotai County, Jingtai County, Heshui County, Chongxin County and Yongjing County. This survey used the health literacy questionnaire for Chinese resident of 2013.The SPSS19.0 statistical software is used to analyze the datas. The relative number and constituent ratio are used to describe the results. The χ2 Test is used to analyze the health literacy and the three aspects literacy between different groups of respondents under different sociology of population characteristics; Logistic Regressions are used to determine the major influencing factors of health literacy, the enter equation is aenter=0.05, and the exit equation is αexit=0.1. The value of P below 0.05 is considered to be having statistic significance.ResultsMost respondents are farmers that their overall education level is relatively low. The overall level of residents’ health literacy is only 5.2% in Gansu Province, and the rates of three aspects literacy about knowledge, behavior and skill are:13.6%,5.9% and 7.9% respectively. The respondents’ literacy of basic medical and health information are relatively low, and influenced the overall level obviously. Single factor and multivariate analysis show that the influencing factors of Gansu residents’ health literacy are regions, race, occupation and family monthly income. The urban residents’ health literacy level is higher than the rural residents’ and the value of OR is 2.011. Among occupational factors, the health literacy level of civil servant, teacher, medical staff and worker are significantly higher than farmer and there is a strong correlation between medical staff and high health literacy (OR=8.888,95% CI:2.971-26.586). People whose family monthly income above 2000 RMB have more than two times possibility to have higher health literacy than the others whose family monthly income below 1000 RMB. The three aspects of literacy are both influenced by education level, and there is a positive correlation between education level and literacy level.Conclusions1. The residents’ health literacy level of Gansu Province in 2013 is relatively low, only accounted for 5.2%.2. The main influencing factors of Gansu residents’ health literacy are regions, occupation and income.3. The focus population groups of health education intervention work are rural residents, the older, low education level group and low-income group.4. At present the health problems need to be resolved about health literacy are popularizing the health knowledge and scientific self-management of chronic disease, disseminating the basic medical policy and improving the individual cultural quality. |
PDF Full Text Request