Center for Health Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, 315100, China.
Department of Health and Management, Ningbo First Hospital, Ningbo, 315010, China.
BMC Public Health. 2020 May 14;20(1):690. doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-08804-4.
Improving health literacy is an important public health goal in many countries. Although many studies have suggested that low health literacy has adverse effects on an individual's health outcomes, confounding factors are often not accounted. This paper examines the interplay between health literacy and chronic disease prevention.
A population-based sample of 8194 participants aged 15-69 years old in Ningbo were used from China's 2017 National Health Literacy Surveillance Data. We use multivariate regression analysis to disentangle the relationship between health literacy and chronic disease prevention.
We find the association between health literacy and the occurrence of the first chronic condition is attenuated after we adjust the results for age and education. This might arise because having one or more chronic conditions is associated with better knowledge about chronic diseases, thus improve their health literacy. More importantly, we find health literacy is associated with a reduction in the likelihood of having a comorbid condition. However, this protective effect is only found among urban residents, suggesting health literacy might be a key factor explaining the rural-urban disparity in health outcomes.
Our findings highlight the important role of health literacy in preventing comorbidities instead of preventing the first chronic condition. Moreover, family support could help improve health literacy and result in beneficial effects on health.
提高健康素养是许多国家的一个重要公共卫生目标。尽管许多研究表明，健康素养低对个人的健康结果有不利影响，但往往没有考虑混杂因素。本文探讨了健康素养与慢性病预防之间的相互作用。
本研究使用了来自中国 2017 年国家健康素养监测数据的 8194 名 15-69 岁的基于人群的样本。我们使用多元回归分析来理清健康素养与慢性病预防之间的关系。
我们发现，在调整年龄和教育因素后，健康素养与首次出现慢性病之间的关联减弱。这可能是因为患有一种或多种慢性病与对慢性病的知识更好有关，从而提高了他们的健康素养。更重要的是，我们发现健康素养与减少合并症的可能性有关。然而，这种保护作用仅在城市居民中发现，这表明健康素养可能是解释城乡健康结果差异的一个关键因素。
我们的研究结果强调了健康素养在预防合并症方面的重要作用，而不是预防首次出现的慢性病。此外，家庭支持可以帮助提高健康素养，并对健康产生有益的影响。
