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      Health literacy among university students in Greece: determinants and association with self-perceived health, health behaviours and health risks

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          Abstract

          Background

          Health literacy is widely considered as a key determinant of health and a priority in the public health policy agenda. Low health literacy has been associated with poorer health states, broader inequalities and higher health systems’ costs. In the present study we bring into focus the functional health literacy among university students in Greece, researching and assessing mainly their ability to apply basic knowledge in a health context.

          Methods

          The study was carried out during the period 15–30 April 2013, among a random sample of 1,526 students of 14 Higher Tertiary Public universities and Technological Educational Institutes in Greece. The objective of the study was to assess the functional health literacy among university students in Greece, adopting the short four-item comprehension test of Bostock and Steptoe. Summary statistics, correlations and regressions were used to assess the determinants of health literacy and the association with self-perceived health, health behaviours and health risks.

          Results

          Economic factors, such as family income, demographic factors, such as gender, and health behaviours and risks, namely consumption of alcohol, smoking and physical workout are associated with the level of health literacy and health status of the participant. While the results of the study are consistent with previous work in this area, several findings worth further research.

          Conclusions

          Though, health promotion interventions in Greece include health literacy as one of the basic pillars of the public health policy agenda, it is clear, that health literacy needs to become a key policy issue in Greece, mainly focusing in young ages, where healthy (or unhealthy) behaviours are established affecting the health through the life span.

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          Most cited references8

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          Development of a brief test to measure functional health literacy.

          We describe the development of an abbreviated version of the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (TOFHLA) to measure patients' ability to read and understand health-related materials. The TOFHLA was reduced from 17 Numeracy items and 3 prose passages to 4 Numeracy items and 2 prose passages (S-TOFHLA). The maximum time for administration was reduced from 22 minutes to 12. In a group of 211 patients given the S-TOFHLA, Cronbach's alpha was 0.68 for the 4 Numeracy items and 0.97 for the 36 items in the 2 prose passages. The correlation (Spearman) between the S-TOFHLA and the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM) was 0.80, although there were important disagreements between the two tests. The S-TOFHLA is a practical measure of functional health literacy with good reliability and validity that can be used by health educators to identify individuals who require special assistance to achieve learning goals.
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            Low literacy impairs comprehension of prescription drug warning labels.

            Adverse events resulting from medication error are a serious concern. Patients' literacy and their ability to understand medication information are increasingly seen as a safety issue. To examine whether adult patients receiving primary care services at a public hospital clinic were able to correctly interpret commonly used prescription medication warning labels. In-person structured interviews with literacy assessment. Public hospital, primary care clinic. A total of 251 adult patients waiting for an appointment at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport (LSUHSC-S) Primary Care Clinic. Correct interpretation, as determined by expert panel review of patients' verbatim responses, for each of 8 commonly used prescription medication warning labels. Approximately one-third of patients (n=74) were reading at or below the 6th-grade level (low literacy). Patient comprehension of warning labels was associated with one's literacy level. Multistep instructions proved difficult for patients across all literacy levels. After controlling for relevant potential confounding variables, patients with low literacy were 3.4 times less likely to interpret prescription medication warning labels correctly (95% confidence interval: 2.3 to 4.9). Patients with low literacy had difficulty understanding prescription medication warning labels. Patients of all literacy levels had better understanding of warning labels that contained single-step versus multiple-step instructions. Warning labels should be developed with consumer participation, especially with lower literate populations, to ensure comprehension of short, concise messages created with familiar words and recognizable icons.
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              Developing Predictive Models of Health Literacy

              INTRODUCTION Low health literacy (LHL) remains a formidable barrier to improving health care quality and outcomes. Given the lack of precision of single demographic characteristics to predict health literacy, and the administrative burden and inability of existing health literacy measures to estimate health literacy at a population level, LHL is largely unaddressed in public health and clinical practice. To help overcome these limitations, we developed two models to estimate health literacy. METHODS We analyzed data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), using linear regression to predict mean health literacy scores and probit regression to predict the probability of an individual having ‘above basic’ proficiency. Predictors included gender, age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, poverty status, marital status, language spoken in the home, metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and length of time in U.S. RESULTS All variables except MSA were statistically significant, with lower educational attainment being the strongest predictor. Our linear regression model and the probit model accounted for about 30% and 21% of the variance in health literacy scores, respectively, nearly twice as much as the variance accounted for by either education or poverty alone. CONCLUSIONS Multivariable models permit a more accurate estimation of health literacy than single predictors. Further, such models can be applied to readily available administrative or census data to produce estimates of average health literacy and identify communities that would benefit most from appropriate, targeted interventions in the clinical setting to address poor quality care and outcomes related to LHL.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Arch Public Health
                Arch Public Health
                Archives of Public Health
                BioMed Central
                0778-7367
                2049-3258
                2014
                23 May 2014
                : 72
                : 1
                : 15
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Economics Department, University of Piraeus, 80, Karaoli & Dimitriou str, 18534 Piraeus, Greece
                Article
                2049-3258-72-15
                10.1186/2049-3258-72-15
                4066308
                24987522
                ec9ed49c-def2-41eb-8866-7c41a1f73734
                Copyright © 2014 Vozikis et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

                History
                : 10 October 2013
                : 21 February 2014
                Categories
                Research

                Public health
                health literacy,health behaviour,health risks,greece,university student
                Public health
                health literacy, health behaviour, health risks, greece, university student

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