Abstract
BackgroundIn recent years, research on health literacy has become increasingly focused on the health care system and public health. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate health literacy and analyse the risk factors that affect health literacy in Wuhan, China.MethodsMultistage stratified random sampling was used to select 5304 urban and rural residents aged 15 to 69 years from 204 monitoring points in 15 districts of Wuhan. Using the Chinese Citizen Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) (2018 edition), a face-to-face survey was conducted from November to December 2018. Risk factors that may affect health literacy were assessed using the Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression models.ResultsThe knowledge rate of health literacy was relatively low (19.3%). The knowledge rate of health-related behaviour and lifestyle (BAL, 17.3%) was the lowest of the three aspects of health literacy, and the knowledge rate of chronic diseases (CD, 19.0%) was the lowest of the six dimensions of health literacy. Respondents who lived in urban areas, had higher education levels, worked as medical staff, had a higher household income and did not suffer from chronic diseases were likely to have higher health literacy.ConclusionsThe health literacy levels of citizens in Wuhan are insufficient and need to improve.
Highlights
In recent years, research on health literacy has become increasingly focused on the health care system and public health
In our study conducted in Wuhan, China, the knowledge rate of health literacy was 19.3%, which was a little higher than the average level of Chinese residents in 2018 (17.1%) [31], but still constituted a large gap compared with the knowledge rate in developed areas [17] (32.3% in Beijing, China)
Participants who were not suffering from chronic diseases had a higher knowledge rate of health literacy, consistent with the results reported by Rafferty AP et al [34] and Beauchamp A et al [35]
Summary
Research on health literacy has become increasingly focused on the health care system and public health. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate health literacy and analyse the risk factors that affect health literacy in Wuhan, China. In January 2008, the Chinese Ministry of Health finalized the bulletin “Chinese Resident Health Literacy— Basic Knowledge and Skills (Trial)” [13, 14], which was the first government document to define citizens’ health literacy and played a vital role in the development and promotion of health education in China [15]. Health literacy knowledge rates, which are used to measure the level of health literacy, refer to the proportion of people with good knowledge of health literacy in the total
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