Health Product Literacy of Thai People

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, communication technology allows people to communicate freely, including fake news about health products and beliefs that affect behaviours and health beliefs, which leads to misconceptions. Lack of knowledge and skills in screening and selecting health products may lead to wrong health beliefs and health behaviours. It can affect low health conditions, mortality rates, hospitalisation rates, and treatment costs. So improving health product literacy is a necessary topic.

Objectives: To assess the health product literacy and factors related to health product literacy of Thai people at aged 15 years and over.

Methods: This was a quantitative research project by a cross-sectional survey between March and June 2022 that used multistage sampling in 13 health regions across Thailand. It was conducted through face-to-face interviews with the health product literacy questionnaire. The number of samples was 2,331 samples at a confidence level of 95%. Then, a total of 2,434 samples were collected.

Results: In the sample of 2,434 cases, most of them were females 57.52%, aged 25 - 45 years old 60.44%; freelance, farmers, or self-employed 44.6%; Bachelor's degree or higher 41.13%; income of 10,000-15,000 baht a month 42.19%; role as a community member 90.76%; seldom participate in community activities 55.63%; and lived in urban 68.41%, respectively. An average overall health product literacy score was 70.89%, of which 55.88% was at a moderate level, followed by 26.17% at a high level and 17.95% at a low level, respectively. The levels of health product literacy with the highest score were a functional health product literacy at 73.76%, followed by critical health product literacy at 70.95%, and communicative/interactive health product literacy at 67.01%, respectively. Health product literacy scores according to the V-shape showed that the highest average score was a health behavior change at 75.11%, followed by information understanding 75.05%, abilities or skills in information accessing 72.76%, telling others about health information 67.98%, retaliation and information exchange 67.81%, and decision making at 66.22%, respectively. The factors that had a statistically significant relationship on the score level were the internal factors gender, education, personal income, role in the community, participation in community activities, and residential areas at p<0.05. Besides, these included the external factors: internet use, receiving information, and obtaining or using the information in making decisions. The top three media channels that the sample accessed were Facebook, television, and YouTube at 77.44, 59.04, and 52.67%, respectively.

Conclusions: Most samples had a moderate health product literacy level. It meants having good health product literacy, but it might not be enough for proper practice. The majority of them were able to explore, access, and use the resources on their own, as well as exhibit the behaviour of sharing the knowledge that they acquired with others. On the other hand, they lacked skills in analytical thinking, decision making, screening, and selection of such information for use in health care (media knowledge). Both internal and external factors in terms of information getting from social media were statistically significant factors that affected the level of health product literacy.