Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Aug 15:10:900883.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.900883. eCollection 2022.

How to make more people adopt healthy behaviors? Assessing health literacy, health promoting lifestyle and their association of community residents in Shenzhen, China

Lei Zhang  1 , Jia Liao  1 , Xueyan Pan  1 , Dongmei Liang  1 , Jinmei Zeng  1 , Mingwei Sun  1 , Xiaowen Luo  1 , Xingyu Ma  1 , Mingjuan Yin  1 , Jingdong Ni  1
Affiliations

How to make more people adopt healthy behaviors? Assessing health literacy, health promoting lifestyle and their association of community residents in Shenzhen, China

Lei Zhang et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Introduction: Health literacy (HL) has been concerned a key factor for determining the use of health information and promoting health. The study aimed to explore the relationship between different health literacy types and health promoting lifestyle (HPL) in different health literacy population.

Methods: The survey analyzed a sample of 16,921 community residents in Shenzhen. The Chinese Citizen Health Literacy Questionnaire and health-promoting lifestyle profile II (HPLP- II) were used to assess health literacy and health promoting lifestyle.

Results: Participants were divided into different populations based on the correlation between HL and HPL. The low-HL and medium-HL populations were judged to lack health literacy, and demographic characteristics were significantly different between different HPL levels in low-HL and medium-HL populations. There were 6 types of HL, and health information literacy (β = 0.08, P < 0.001) and chronic disease literacy (β = 0.08, P < 0.001) positively predicted HPL in the low-HL population. In the medium-HL population, the results of reward and punishment analysis showed that health information was a basic factor, chronic disease was performance factor, medical care was a motivating factor for HPL; there were 6 dimensions of HPL, and health responsibility (HR), stress management (SM) and physical activity (PA) were not significantly different in medium-HL population. The results of regression analysis showed that HR and PA had a great impact on HPL (HR: β = 0.193, PA: β =0.179, β for other dimensions was 0.186, 0.176, 0.171, 0.164), but the HR and PA standardized scores were lowest in the HPL dimensions (HR: 69.42, PA: 68.5, lower than other dimensions), so it may be HR and PA that cause HPL unchanged between groups in the medium-HL population.

Conclusions: Different HL levels have different relationships with HPL, and different HL types have different effects on HPL. Shenzhen community residents need to improve their HL, and they have great potentials for further progress to improve the population health. Public health policy makers need to consider formulating different policies for people with different HL levels.

Keywords: Shenzhen; health literacy; health-promoting lifestyle; online survey; reward and punishment analysis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Geographical distribution of Shenzhen.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Questionnaire collection.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Boxplot of HL and HPL. HL: health literacy, the score range of health literacy was 2–66, and 5 points were divided into a group. HPL: health promoting lifestyle.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Nielsen-Bohlman, Panzer AM, Kindig DA. Health literacy: a prescription to end confusion. Washington, DC: National Academies Press (US) (2004). - PubMed
    1. Castro-Sanchez E, Chang P, Vila-Candel R, Escobedo AA, Holmes AH. Health literacy and infectious diseases: why does it matter? Int J Infect Dis. (2016) 43:103–10. 10.1016/j.ijid.2015.12.019 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Paakkari L, Okan O. COVID-19: health literacy is an underestimated problem. Lancet Public Health. (2020) 5:e249–50. 10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30086-4 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. von Wagner C, Knight K, Steptoe A, Wardle J. Functional health literacy and health-promoting behaviour in a national sample of British adults. J Epidemiol Community Health. (2007) 61:1086–90. 10.1136/jech.2006.053967 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ishikawa H, Nomura K, Sato M, Yano E. Developing a measure of communicative and critical health literacy: a pilot study of Japanese office workers. Health Promot Int. (2008) 23:269–74. 10.1093/heapro/dan017 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types