Investigation Of Status And Influence Factors Of Health Literacy Of The Urban And Rural Residents In Hebei Province

Health literacy is an important part of health education and health promotion, it is also an important factor that affects health of people. In recent years, China has launched health quality monitoring project to continuously and steadily monitoring the health literacy of urban and rural residents. This paper collects and analyzes the health literacy monitoring questionnaires on Hebei urban and rural residents’ of 2013. From the overall level of Hebei urban and rural residents’ health literacy, six kinds of issues on three aspects, this paper evaluates the condition of residents’ health literacy, combines with residents’ self-evaluated health situation, analyzes its influencing factors and puts forward opinions and suggestions. Objectives:Through the analysis of health literacy survey data in Hebei province in 2013, the purpose of this paper is to know the condition of the urban and rural residents’ health literacy in Hebei province, discuss the main factors affecting the provincial health literacy, discover weaknesses of residents’ health literacy, provide data support for adjusting the working content to promote future health literacy, and provide scientific basis for promoting health literacy strategies and policies. Methods:With the combined methods of multi-stage stratified, PPS, simple random sampling, the investigation extracted the sample randomly from 14 districts of 8 cities, namely Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Handan, Xingtai, Baoding, Zhangjiakou, Cangzhou, and Langfang. The respondents were 3548 urban and rural residents of 15-69 years old who were trained uniformly. The questionnaires were "national monitoring residents’ health literacy questionnaire" compiled by the State Health and Family Planning Commission in 2013 and were taken back on the spot. After the investigation, strict quality control were verified. Data entry used Epidata3.1 software, statistical analysis used SPSS21.0 statistical software. Difference was statistically significant(P < 0.05). Data analysis methods were descriptive analysis, single factor chi-square test, rank and inspection, the multi-factor logistic regression analysis. Results:(1) The overall level of residents’ health literacy in Hebei province is 10.5%; Among them, the basic concept of knowledge and literacy levels is 19.6%, healthy lifestyle and behavior literacy level is 10.3%, basic skills in literacy level is 14.5%. The basic knowledge and literacy of the residents are the highest, level of basic skills second, healthy lifestyle and behavior literacy level the lowest. Six types of health literacy of residents in Hebei province are: scientific health perspectives(36.9%), infectious disease prevention literacy(15.7%), chronic disease prevention quality(13.2%), safety and first aid literacy(47.4%), the basic medical quality(8.2%), healthy information literacy(22.2%). Among them, the safety and first aid literacy occupies the highest rate, while the basic medical quality the lowest. For these six types of questions on three aspects: the largest number got score between 40%- 79% of the total score. Overall level of health literacy is low.(2)The Residents’ health literacy overall score are“<20%”、“20%~”、“40%~”、“60%~”、“80%~”,The percentage is 1.9%、16.5%、28.4%、42.7%、10.5%。(3) Health basic knowledge and concepts relating 38 topics, among them, correct answers of the label of food production date, the view on pregnant women work on dangerous job, solutions to dog bites are more, that of the description of liver and the TB transmission way are lowest. A healthy lifestyle and behavior involved 22 related topics, correct answers of the dangers of sleep deprivation, the harm of Internet addiction, and free access to health knowledge are more. The benefits of eating soy products got the lowest score. Basic skills involved in 20 related topics, correct answer of condom usage are more, the correct answer of reading leaflet get the lowest.(4) Single factor chi-square test shows that City residents and residents with high education background get higher score of health literacy and six kinds of questions on three aspects, difference was statistically significant. The residents with different age, occupation have different health literacy, difference was statistically significant. Multi-factor logistic regression analysis results show that city residents and residents with high education background get higher score of health literacy and six kinds of questions on three aspects.(5) Most residents’ self-evaluation are “ordinary”, “relatively good”. The self-evaluation are “good”, “relatively good”, “ordinary”, “relatively bad”, “bad”, the score of health literacy are 59.36±17.35、58.45±18.75、58.03±17.84、51.94±17.95、48.90±18.61. Conclusions:(1) In 2013, health literacy of Hebei residents is still in a low level.(2) The healthy lifestyle and behavior literacy of Hebei residents is relatively lower than other two aspects, and residents’ healthy lifestyle and behavior issues of awareness is low, it’s difficult to transfer health knowledge into action. Basic medical quality and infectious disease prevention got lowest scores, and they are the working emphasis in the future.(3) The influence factors of health literacy are urban and rural areas, gender, age, educational degree, occupation, etc. The area and educational degree are independent factors affecting health literacy. Urban residents, high-education are protected factors of health literacy. Living in rural area and low-education are dangerous factors.(4) The better the self-evaluation of health is, the higher health literacy level of Hebei residents is.(5) According to current situation of urban and rural residents’ health literacy in Hebei province, the need to build health information platform, take measures to carry out targeted health education, to improve the provincial health literacy level.