Factors Associated with Limited Level of Health Literacy on Application of Health Information Related to Opioid Use in Kachin State, Myanmar

Abstract

Introduction: Opioid abuse has caused immense suffering for people in Myanmar especially in Kachinand Shan States. Promoting health literacy relevant to opioid use can lessen those problems but little isknown about opioid literacy level of general population. Thus, objectives of this study were to find outthe prevalence of literacy level on application of health information relevant to opioid use and the factorsaffecting the limited level of opioid literacy among adult males in Kachin State, Myanmar.Method and Materials: A total of 327 adult males in Kachin State who had never used illicit drugs wereselected for this cross-sectional study. A sub-scale of the European Health Literacy Questionnaire, HLSEU-Q47, was adapted to assess the level of application on opioid-related health information. Data werecollected from July to August 2019 through face to face interview with the participants. Multiple logisticanalysis was performed to find out the association.Result: 61.47% of the participants had limited level of literacy in terms of application of opioid-relatedhealth information. The findings indicated that not being Bamar (AOR= 3.61, 95% CI = 1.97-6.63, p<0.001), being unemployed (AOR=2.44, 95% CI= 1.38-4.30, p <0.01) and not having siblings who usedopioids (AOR=2.47, 95% CI= 1.10-5.56, p <0.05) were more likely to have limited level of literacy in termsof applying opioid-related health information.Discussion: Socioeconomic and environmental factors had influence on health literacy especially applicationof health information relevant to opioid use. It is important to take appropriate measures to improve opioidrelatedhealth literacy particularly among the vulnerable groups to help prevent them from drug use and itsproblems.