A Cross-Sectional Study on Health Literacy and its associated factors among Adults of a Rural Area of Hooghly District, West Bengal

Background and Objectives: Health literacy (HL) is the degree to which individuals have the ability to access, understand and use health-related information and thus enable them to make health-related decisions. Thus accessing health-related information, understanding the available information and using those in their daily life determines HL of the individual.  Addressing problematic health literacy can help to reduce health inequities in the community. Knowing the adequacy of HL is preliminary step towards it. The study aims to assess the HL status and its associated factors.Materials and Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted to assess HL among adults aged 18 to 64 years residing in the rural area of Singur using the tool HLS-EU-Q47 from October 2020 to November 2022. Two-stage random sampling was done among 15 selected villages under the field practice area. Data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel IBM SPSS v. 16.Results: The median age of the study participants was 40(29.0 - 49.0) years. Adequate HL was found in 11.7% of the participants and 88.3% had problematic/inadequate HL. HL was found to be significantly associated, at 95% confidence interval, with the age of the study participants, years of schooling, employment status, being decision-makers of the family, and presence of healthcare workers in the family. HL was found to be adequate in the healthcare domain and inadequate in other domains.Conclusion: HL was found to be problematic/inadequate in majority of the study participants. Strategies to strengthen health literacy should be adopted with more emphasis on younger adults. Health-promoting schools are one of the initial steps to achieve the same. Healthcare professionals should disseminate health promotion interventions among the general population to improve the HL of the community.