Abstract:
Objective To figure out the health literacy status between medical and non-medical students in a comprehensive university in Jiangsu, analyze potential factors affecting students' health literacy, and provide a basis for conducting health education programs and making targeted health intervention strategies.
Methods Random cluster sampling method was applied to investigate 1 250 college students, including 434 medical students (34.7%), using a self-designed health literacy questionnaire based on "the 66 tips on health literacy for Chinese citizens".
Results The proportion of medical students who were graded as having health literacy (20.0%) was higher than that of the non-medical students (7.1%) (P < 0.01). There were significant differences in the levels of basic health knowledge and concepts, healthy lifestyles and behaviors, and health-related skills between the medical students (37.1%, 26.7%, and 71.0%, respectively) and the non-medical students (19.7%, 12.1%, and 53.7%, respectively) (P < 0.05). Also, there were outstanding differences in the levels of scientific health attitude, safety and first aid, basic medical care, and health information between the medical students (64.9%, 83.2%, 41.2%, and 87.1%, respectively) and the non-medical students (48.4%, 64.2%, 26.5%, and 75.7%, respectively) (P < 0.05). However, the levels of infectious diseases prevention and chronic diseases prevention were not different and were both much lower (< 5%) than the levels of other dimensions of health literacy. The multiple logistic regression analysis results showed that grade (with freshman as reference, for sophomore and junior students, OR=2.263, 95%CI:1.572-3.257) and major (with medical students as reference, for non-medical students, OR=0.341, 95%CI:0.237-0.490) were the factors influencing health literacy grading.
Conclusion In spite of the fact that health literacy is related to medical background, both medical and non-medical students' health literacy levels are at a low level generally and need to be further improved, especially in healthy lifestyles and behaviors, infectious diseases prevention, and chronic diseases prevention.
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