Health literacy and its influence factors in five occupational populations in China, 2014

  Objective  To analyze the level and influencing factors of health literacy in teachers, medical staff, civil servants, institution employees, and enterprise workers and to provide evidences for developing strategies of intervention on health literacy in the populations.

  Methods  We conducted the survey in 64 pilot counties or districts of National Health Promotion Program. We recruited 30 teachers in 3 schools, 20 professionals in 4 medical institutions, 40 civil servants or personnel in 4 government agencies or public institutions, and 60 workers in 2 large or medium-sized enterprises in each of the pilot counties or districts using stratified multi-stage cluster random sampling; then we performed questionnaire surveys among all the participants with The Questionnaire for National Health Literacy Surveillance in 2014.

  Results  Totally 1 792 teachers, 1 945 medical professionals, 1 252 civil servants, 1 151 personnel of public institutions, and 3 534 enterprise workers completed the survey. The proportions of the participants with adequate health literacy (correctly answering 80% or more of the health literacy-related questions in the questionnaire) were 65.19% for the medical professionals, 55.11% for the civil servants, 52.48% for the personnel of public institutions, 42.30% for the teachers, and 31.66% for the enterprise workers, respectively, with a statistical difference among the five groups (χ² = 653.723, P < 0.001). Gender was a significant influencing factor of health literacy only among the personnel of public institutions (χ² = 42.979, P < 0.001); age influenced health literacy significantly among teachers (χ² = 20.768, P < 0.001), medical professionals (χ² = 24.039, P < 0.001), personnel of public institutions (χ² = 12.697, P = 0.013), and enterprise workers (χ² = 24.740, P < 0.001), with the highest health literacy for the participants aged 25 – 34 years in all the occupation groups. Education was a significant impact factors of health literacy among the teachers (χ² = 26.335), medical professionals (χ² = 48.517), civil servants (χ² = 28.085), personnel of public institutions (χ² = 28.192), and enterprise workers (χ² = 253.241)(P < 0.001 for all) and positively correlated with health literacy among all the participants. The health literacy of Han participants was higher than that of other ethnic participants.

  Conclusion  The health literacy of occupational populations is higher than that of the general population in China. Educational level, age, ethnicity and gender are important influencing factors of health literacy in occupational populations and the results need to be concerned while developing strategies for health literacy promotion in occupational groups.