Health Literacy Status and Its Determinants among School Teachers in Ahlone District, Yangon

Abstract

Objective: Schools globally support public health goals alongside education; however, despite having supportive environment to get better access to reliable health information, teachers’ participation in health promotion remains low, and their health literacy levels are still unclear, even though teacher health literacy is a key factor in fostering health behavior in schools. This study aimed to assess school teachers' health literacy status and explore its determinants among school teachers in Ahlone district, Yangon Region, Myanmar. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 355 school teachers in the Alone District, Yangon Region, using self-administered, culturally adapted Burmese translation of the European health literacy questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47), a validated comprehensive health literacy survey tool. The study period was from December 2022 to February 2023. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the determinants of health literacy status. Results: Among school teachers, adequate health literacy was 107 (30.1%), and limited health literacy was 248 (69.9%). The results showed that the absence of anyone in family members who attended health related trainings [AOR: 0.37, 95%CI: 0.13, 0.98, p=0.047], and who watched health education movies sometimes [AOR: 0.32, 95%CI: 0.11, 0.88, p=0.027] were less likely to have adequate health literacy status compared with their counterparts among school teachers in this study. Conclusion: Only one-third of school teachers had adequate health literacy level in this study and therefore, providing health related trainings and encouragement of watching health education movies more frequently needs to be focused on increasing the health literacy status among school teachers.