Exploring barriers of health literacy on non-communicable disease prevention and care among patients in north wollo zone public hospitals; Northeast, Ethiopia, 2023: application of socio-ecological model.

BACKGROUND: Health literacy is the important for the prevention of non-communicable disease to make informed health decisions, and practice healthy and protective behaviours. Therefore, application of socioecological model to this study aimed to identify multilevel factors on health literacy among patients and develop scientific health communication interventional strategies to improve health literacy on non-communicable disease prevention and care. OBJECTIVE: To explore barriers of health literacy on non-communicable disease prevention and care among patients in north wollo zone public Hospitals, Northeast Ethiopia, 2023. METHOD: In this study phenomenological study design was conducted from February 5 to 30/2023.We have used purposive sampling technique to select study participants from chronic follow up clinics. Data were collected using in-depth interview and focused group discussion in which audio was recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated to English. Thematic analysis was performed with atlas ti. 7 software. RESULT: In this study four main themes with seven subthemes were developed. The main themes were factors at the organizational, community, interpersonal, and intra-personal factors. The poor knowledge, lack of enough money for transportation and medication at the hospital were identified as barrier to get early diagnosis and treatment. Some participants explored that they have no any support from family or others. The cultural norms like weeding and funeral ceremonies enforce patients to consume prohibited substances like alcohol and salty foods. CONCLUSION: In this study different barriers of health literacy were explored. Lack of knowledge, economic problems, lack of social support, poor communication with health care providers, cultural influences, lack of regular health education, lack of access to health care services and poor infrastructure were main barriers of health literacy in patients with NCD. Therefore, we recommended all concerned bodies to work on social and behavioral change communication intervention focusing on awareness creation, supply of drugs and create supportive environment to get accessible and affordable health care service to decrease the impact of non-communicable disease at personal, community and national level.

Health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance worldwide: A systematic review.

Objective: Health literacy helps an individual to have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information to make appropriate health decisions. This study aimed to review the association between health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Method: This systematic review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses steps. Databases including PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, EMBASE, World Health Organization libraries, and Google Scholar were used to search all published articles in the area of health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance until August 1, 2022. Result: In this review, 1348 articles were retrieved. Finally, 13 articles were included in the review after the removal of duplicates that did not meet our inclusion criteria. In all, 10 articles showed that health literacy was significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. This review also showed that positive perception of the vaccine, vaccine hesitancy, adverse reaction from vaccines, residence, socioeconomic status, level of education, younger age, being a health worker, and positive belief have associations with health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. There was significant heterogeneity in the study population and measurement tools used for health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Conclusion: This systematic review provides comprehensive evidence on health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance globally. There was significant heterogeneity in the study population and measurement tools used for health literacy and COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Most studies reported that health literacy is significantly associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Therefore, investing in health literacy using different vaccine promotion strategies may improve COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and health decision-making to decrease the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.