Investigating the Relation Between Health Literacy and Behaviors Promoting Health in Health Ambassadors of Kazeroon City Healthcare Centers 2017

ABSTRACT

Background: During the past decade, significance and impacts of low level of health literacy on individuals' health status has been greatly noticed. This study was conducted with the aim of determining the relation between health literacy with promoting behaviors in health ambassadors of Kazeroon city healthcare centers. Methods: This study was descriptive – analytical and of cross-sectional type. The research sampling method was multi-stage method. Samples were selected from three urban healthcare centers and three rural health care centers and from each center respectively two bases and two health houses were randomly selected. In the present study, two questionnaires of health literacy and standard questionnaire (HpLp-II) was used. Pearson correlation test, independent t-test and bilateral variance analysis were used for data analysis. Results: 528 health ambassadors completed the questionnaires that from them 79.85 were woman and 20.20% man. The results of the present study showed that there is a significant relation and positive correlation between health literacy rate of ambassadors and general behaviors promoting health and its components like liability, physical activity and nutrition habits (P<0.05). Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that increasing of ambassadors health literacy is effective in increasing their health promoting behaviors and it is recommended that in future with effective interventions, besides promoting health literacy of people in various fields, increase their cooperation and participation for self-care and doing health promoting behaviors