The Characteristics Of Health Literacy Of Residents In Hubei Province And Its Impact On Health Status

ObjectivesHealth literacy is an important evaluating indicator of national health quality, it is the variable which related to health output. Low health literacy has a negative impact on the overall health status and state health system, which becomes a major public health issue. Along with the development of society, enhancement of living standards and strengthen of health awareness, people's need on health increases year by year. People realized that not only biological factors but also social enviroment, lifestyle and psychological factors are the key factors that affect individual and population health, along with the deterioration of environment and aging problems, public health is facing with enormous challenges.The purpose of this study was to analyse public health literac's effect factors and its impact on public health status through investigating public health literacy status in Hubei province, to evaluate the level of individual or public health literacy, to screen the indviduals or groups with low level of health literacy, to provide toolkit for the evaluation of health education, health promotion or project effect, and further to provide reference for the development of health education and health promotion strategies or standards.MethodsIn this study, web searching and literature searching were used to collect domestic and foreign data on health literacy, to explore the meaning of health literacy theory and its investigation and evaluation methods, and also to analyse health literacy reaearch progress and its application domain at home and abroad; random sample investigation was used to collect relevant indicators on residents health literacy in Hubei province, including health knowledge, health belief, health behavior and health skill; descriptive analysis was used to analyse the distribution of health knowledge, belief, behavior and skill; single factor and multi-factor anslysis were used to analyse the factors which affect residents's health knowledge, belief, behavior and skill; logistic regression was used to analyse health literacy's effect on health status; structural equation modeling analysis was used to make quantitative analysis on the connection between health literacy and health status and build a mathematical model of healthy abstract theory.ResultsFor the distribution of health literacy: (1) the awareness on chronic noncommunicable disease, nutrition and medicine is low among population, but the awareness on infectious disease is relatively good; (2) the majority of the crowd hold a positive health belief; (3) the daily health behavior is better and medical behavior is to be improved; (4) the mastery status of health skills is better and demographic characteristics have a great effect on health skills; (5) education is the most important impact factor in health literacy, health literacy increased with the heighten of education; (6) age's effect on health literacy mainly mainfests in healh knowledge, belief and skills; (7) there is a great difference on health literacy between urban and rural residents; (8) gender is an important factor which affect health literacy.For health literacy's effect on health ststus: (1) the crowd held a positive evaluation on their own health status: (2) demographic characteristics affected health status through affecting individual health literacy; (3) health literacy played an important role in health status; (4) health literacy could improve individual's ability and further improve individual health status. Conclusions1. To enhance health education on healthy lifestyle and chronic non-communicable diseasees, and create a supportive environment.2. To carry out targeted health education to improve the health literacy of people with low cultural3. To adapt to the requirement of aging trend, and strengthen health education on elders.4. To strengthen health education work at rural area, and improve the health status of rural residents.5. To establish civic health literacy monitoring and evaluation system.Innovations1. It's the first time to give a comprehensive describe on current situation of residents' health literacy in Hubei province.2. SEM model was used in this study, the relationship among basic condition, health literacy and health was established and the relationship was quantified.