Health literacy and health-promoting behaviors status among employees in Hamadan

Introduction: Health literacy is considered one of the main determinants of healthpromoting behaviors. The aim of this study was to determine the health literacy of employees of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and its relation with health promotion behaviors. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2016. By stratified sampling, the study recruited 188 employees of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences from seven colleges. Ttwo self-administered questionnaires, namely, the Health Literacy for Iranian Adults (HELIA) and the Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP II.) were used for data gathering the data were analyzed through descriptive statistics for describing data and to assess the relationship between variables multivariate linear regressions was used. In all the tests, P-value<0.05 was considered significant. Results: The employees had a mean age of 36.84 years (SD = 6.32). The majority of the participants were female (71%), and most acquire information related to health via the Internet (74.5%). Moreover, results showed a significant relationship between health literacy and health-promoting behaviors (F=7.22, P<0.001). Health literacy also exerted a significant effect on interpersonal communication (P<0.1), nutrition (P<0.05), and responsibility toward health (P<0.001). Conclusion: Based on results, health literacy and health-promoting behaviors among the employees were undesirable and inadequate levels. Also, health literacy had the positive relationship on nutritional behavior, interpersonal communication, and responsibility toward health. It seems that it is necessary to pay special attention to these issues in the training programs for health promotion of employees in order to increase the efficiency in their performance.