Health Literacy Factors Associated with Health Behavior among Elderly with Hypertension Disease in Khoksi Sub-District, Muang District, Khon Kaen Province

Abstract

We conducted a cross-sectional study to enumerate the health literacy factors associated with health behavior among elderly who have hypertension disease in Khoksi sub-district, Muang district, Khon Kaen province (N=269). We utilized systematic random sampling to recruit 150 study subjects in February 2019. We analyzed the data using descriptive statistics (percentage, mean, standard deviation) and multiple logistic regression (point estimates with 95% CI) to determine the factors associated with health behaviors. 

Most of the participants were female (74.00%), were on average 68.57 years old (S.D.=5.85), and graduated primary school level (82.67%). When investigating to health literacy, we found that 43.33% of participants presented cognitive skill dimension  at an incorrect level, 82.00% of them have an access skill to information and health services was presented at a low level, 62.00% had communication skill at a high level, 51.00% managed their health condition dimension was presented in low level, 37.33% presented media and information literacy dimension at a low level, and 50.00% presented decision skill at a moderate rate. Factors that were associated with positive  health behavior were gender (OR _adjusted=4.77 ; 95 % CI: 1.93 to 11.81 ; p-value 0.001), health literacy; cognitive skills (OR _adjusted =2.66 ; 95 % CI: 1.03 to 6.89; p-value <0.001; managing their health condition well (OR _adjusted =2.01 ; 95 % CI: 1.51 to 2.68; p-value 0.044). This study suggested that stakeholders should be have a campaign to improve health literacy and change health behavior by increasing media coverage of health education, helping the public to develop better communication skills, and offering people training on how to access trustworthy information and to develop their media literacy skills.