The relationship between the level of health literacy and the physical health status of the elderly in Bojnurd city

Abstract

Nowadays, the health literacy topic has become an important issue in the world, and because of its important role in people’s decision-making in the health-related areas has been taken into consideration by policy-makers as one of the basic tools for improving the health ofthe community and increasing the quality of providing health services. Considering the importance of health literacy and the level of functional independence in daily activities, which are important indicators of physical health evaluation, and the importance of examining the relationship between them, this research was performed to investigate the relationship between health literacy level and physical health status of elderly people in Bojnurd. In this cross-sectional descriptive-analytic study, which was performed in 1396, 190 elderly residents of Bojnurd were selected by multistage sampling method (stratified and cluster sampling method). A threepart questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analysis was performed by SPSS 20 software and using statistical tests of one-way analysis of variance and t-test. The mean age of the elderly who were studied were 66.3 ± 5.67 years. Most of the elderly who were studied had an inadequate level of health literacy (40.5%). 23.3% of the elderly had a borderline health literacy level. Only 36.3% of the elderly had adequate health literacy. Men's literacy level was significantly higher than that of women. There was a statistically significant difference between the health literacy levels of elderly people with different educational levels. 1% of the elderly studied were dependent, 3.7% needed help and 95.2% were independent in terms of the daily activity of life. No significant relationship was seen between the levels of autonomy of performance in daily activities of life, occupation, marriage, age. The results of this study showed that the elderly who were studied are lacking adequate health literacy, which is a serious challenge for health care providers and all providers of health services,regarding the growing number of the elderly population in the country.