women's health literacy and some related factors in Mashhad

Health literacy is the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health informa tion and services to make appropriate health decisions. Women’s health literacy is an important skill to par ticipate in the preven tion and promo tion of public health. This study was aimed to inves tigate women's health literacy and some related factors in Mashhad.

This is a descrip tive study that was performed on 400 women referring to cultural centers of Mashhad municipality in 2018-2019. A personal informa tion ques tionnaire and a short form of func tional health literacy ques tionnaire in adults were used to assess the data. Sta ti s tic so ftware (SPSS 16) were used to conduct descrip tive tests (Frequency, mean, and standard devia tion) and analy tical sta ti s tics (Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney, and ordinal logis tic regression).

The results of this study showed that 16.5% of women par ticipants had inadequate health literacy ، 19.8% had border health literacy, and 63.7% had adequate health literacy. Health literacy was signi ficantly related with educa tion, and with the improvement of educa tion level, the score of health literacy also increases. However, no signi ficant rela tionship between health literacy and age, income, marital status, and employment was observed.

More than one-third of women had inadequate or border health literacy. Considering the important role of women in family and community health and the impact of health literacy on this important role, it is necessary to design and implement educa tional programs to promote health literacy skills in them.