Study of Parent’s Health literacy and Child General Health in Bijar Health Centers

Abstract

Introduction and objective: Parents have an important role in regarding the child and adolescent physical and mentl health.The present study was designed to investigate the parent health literacy and the health status of their children and adolescents in Bijar city;139. Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among 648 parents and their adolescent. The samples were randomly selected by multi-stage method. Data were collected using a multi-part questionnaire including parent and student demographic information, household socioeconomic status based on the Family Affluance Scale(FAS), the main part included the parents' health literacy questionnaire using the validated Montazeri et all questionnaire and student's general health assessment using the general health questionnaire with 12 items (GHQ-12). Descriptive and analytical statistics methods; Mean (Standard Deviation) for quantitative, frequency (percentage) for qualitative variables were used to assess differences and unavailable and multivariable Regression Modeling were used to assess the relationship between parental health literacy and the student's general health. The analyses were performed using SPSS software version 25 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA), considering a two-sided P-value of <0.05 as significant Results:The Mean(standard deviation) of parental health literacy in understanding dinention was 78.60 (17.9), in decision making and behavior dimention was 71.56 (18.07), in reading dimention was 66.83 (24.7), in access dimention was 65.58 (22.55) and in assessment dimention was 69.26 (21.35). Also the mean (standard deviation) of total health literacy was 70.36 (15.99). Nearly 40% (39.7%) of parents had limited health literacy. In this study, the mean score of health literacy was significantly higher for employed mothers than for housewives (80.9 vs. 68.29)(p<0.0001), Mean health literacy score was significantly higher in mothers with higher education (84.97 for master of science vs. 57.49 for illiterate)(p<0.0001). The mean score of health literacy was higher in parents with higher socioeconomic status (83.36 in high socioeconomic status vs. 61.84 in parents with poor socioeconomic status) )(p<0.0001) and health literacy in employed fathers was significantly higher than those of unemployed. Mean (SD) of the adolescent general health was 2.84(2.15) and 79.5% of the students had optimal health status. General health score in poor students 3.38 versus 2.1 in high socioeconomic students. General health score of adolescents was 3.45 who had parents with the limited health literacy vs.2.44 with desirable health literacy. Conclusion: The relationship between the optimal health status of adolescents with the increase in parent's health literacy and high-socioeconomic status of families, shows the need for attention and emphasis on improving health literacy in order to improve the health status of the students. Increasing the health literacy of families helped reduce the health inequity, reduce the burden of diseases, school absenteeism, productivity in education, and improve the quality of life of adolescent students.