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. 2023 Aug;19(2):2254539.
doi: 10.1080/21645515.2023.2254539. Epub 2023 Oct 9.

The impact of health literacy on COVID-19 immunization

Merve Sefa Sayar  1 , Mustafa Özgür Akça  1 , I Smail Necati Hakyemez, Ali Asan
Affiliations

The impact of health literacy on COVID-19 immunization

Merve Sefa Sayar et al. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023 Aug.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic can be controlled by vaccination in addition to public health measures. This study investigate the impact of Health Literacy (HL) on vaccination and COVID-19. 334 patients and patient's relatives aged 18 to 65 years who were followed up at the Infectious Diseases Clinic between March and July 2022 for reasons other than COVID-19 disease were included in the study. The COVID-19 vaccination status of each participant was queried and the preferred vaccination was recorded on the case form. The mean age was 40.9 years, and 52.4% (n:175) of participants were women. It was found that 82.3% (n:275) of participants had received at least one dose of the vaccine COVID-19. It was found that 17.6% of participants had not been COVID-19 vaccinated. It was found that 60.7% (n:203) of participants received ≥ 2 doses of the mRNA-based viral vaccine. Vaccination rates were found to be significantly lower in patients with 'inadequate' HL (p = .047). In addition, the vaccination rate was lower in people aged 39 years and younger and in the presence of one or more chronic diseases. When chronic diseases are present, COVID-19 becomes more severe. On the other hand, the disease shows a moderate clinical picture and plays a significant role in transmission to risk groups in the young population, where vaccination rates are low. This situation in the context of COVID-19 demonstrates once again the importance of informing at-risk groups and the healthy young population about vaccine-preventable diseases.

Keywords: COVID-19 vaccines; health literacy; vaccine hesitancy.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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