The influence of health literacy on the health behaviors of patients with chronic diseases

Abstract

Diabetes and hypertension are important public health problems. The enhancement of health literacy can reduce risks for complications. This predictive correlation research aimed to investigate the effect of health literacy and knowledge on the health behaviors of patients with chronic diseases. Nutbeam’s health literacy was used as the conceptual framework. The samples obtained through cluster random sampling were 100 patients with chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, who underwent medical examinations at sub-district health promoting hospitals in Bang Rachan, Sing Buri. The instruments were general characteristics, and health literacy and behavior questionnaires. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis (entry method).
The results revealed that the four independent variables could predict approximately 55% of the variance with a statistical significance of 0.05. Moreover, medication knowledge add medical appointments mostly affected health behaviors ( =.801), followed by functional health literacy ( =.367) and interactive health literacy ( = .367)
This research suggested the enhancement of knowledge of medication and patients with chronic diseases which would result in higher interactive health literacy and the increase of media channels to facilitate them to research information and knowledge of medication and chronic diseases.