Socio-demographic, agricultural, and personal protective factors in relation to health literacy among farmers from all regions of Thailand.

Introduction: Farmers are vulnerable to adverse health effects from pesticide exposure due to their health literacy (HL). Therefore, this study aims to investigate HL among farmers in four main regions of Thailand, investigating socio-demographics, agricultural, and personal protective factors to their HL. Methods: This cross-sectional design study was conducted on 4,035 farmers from January to July 2023. The European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire-47 items were used to measure HL. Results: Thai farmers had a mean HL score of 34.7 ± 8.7, and the farmers in the North region of Thailand had the highest frequency of limited HL (75.8%). Socio-demographic factors that were associated with HL included gender, region of living, marital status, education level, co-morbidity, and number of family members. Agricultural factors associated with HL included planting status, working hours on farm, spraying pesticides, harvesting crops, pesticide use of >1 type, access information from government officers, access information from posters/brochures, information from online multimedia, and access information from neighbors. Personal protective factors that were associated with HL included wearing a hat, goggles, a rubber apron, and a long-sleeved shirt. Discussion: Our study recommends that strategies and interventions to enhance the HL of farmers should be focused on the target populations, which include men, widows, or divorced, those with low levels of education, those who have co-morbidities, and those who applied pesticides of more than 1 type and improper personal protective equipment (PPE) use. The primary emphasis needs to be on the North region of Thailand, making that the target area to improve health equity in Thailand. These efforts would enhance the HL of farmers and sustainably improve pesticide safety behavior. Additionally, there is an urgent need for supportive measures aimed at altering on-farm practices and promoting education on alternative pest management strategies, particularly non-chemical crop protection, to ensure sustainable agriculture.

Health Symptoms and Health Literacy of Pesticides Used among Thai Cornfield Farmers.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to explain health symptoms and health literacy on the use of pesticides, investigate predicting factors and to formulate the health literacy model for the appropriate use of pesticides by cornfield farmers in the northern of Thailand. METHODS: The reliability and validity from 246 samples were selected by proportional stratified random sampling. Data were collected through a questionnaire in 2016 in Phayao province and were analysed by descriptive statistics and logistic regression. RESULTS: All of samples exposed from paraquat, the mean years of farm experience were 14.1 yr and five groups of health symptoms from pesticides were muscle and skeleton, epithelial/mucosal, neurobehavioral, gastrointestinal and endocrine group. The predicting factors had influenced the health literacy of cornfield farmers regarding the use of pesticides were as following: 1) attitude on pesticides exposure (OR= 1.43, CI=1.26-1.64), 2) prevention of the practice of pesticides exposure(OR= 1.03, CI=1.01-1.05) 3) outcome of the expectation on the prevention of pesticides exposure (OR= 0.584, CI=0.41-0.82), 4) the number of secondary occupation(OR= 0.58, CI=0.38-0.89). These affecting factors were considered for the construction of a health literacy model on the use of pesticides. It could predict the model at 42.5%. The health literacy model could be equal to constant (6.85) + attitude on pesticides exposure (0.36) + behavior on the prevention of pesticides exposure (0.03) - outcome expectation on the prevention of pesticides exposure (0.54)- frequency of secondary occupation (0.53). CONCLUSION: We recommend intervention of attitude, practice, outcome expectation and occupation to set up policy for health services among cornfield farmers.