Health literacy among mothers of under 3 years old children at the Hanoi Medical University Clinic: A latent class analysis

Abstract

Health literacy refers to the degree to which people can access and understand health information, as well as communicate their health needs to service providers. The scale has been standardized and divided into 3 groups: Health care, prevention of disease, health promotion. Children under 3 years have immature immunological system, which can affect their development in the future. However, the health management, diseases treatment, and diseases prevention of children younger than 3 years of age depend signifcantly on the health literacy of their mothers. This study aims to describe the health literacy of mothers who have children under 3 years and some factors affecting their health literacy. Data were collected on 389 mothers of children younger than 3 years who take their children to the vaccination clinics at Hanoi Medical University and latent analysis was conducted to identify class of health literacy within the sample. Three health literacy classes were identifed. The lowest mean health literacy index was within the disease prevention dimension, where the largest number of respondents showed limited health literacy. Three distinct health literacy level were identifed and termed low (n = 35.9%), moderate (n = 243, 62.5%) and high health literacy (n = 111, 28.5%). We found that higher scores of Health Literacy Scores (HLS) closely correlated with higher educational levels, the job of mothers, the age of children and the frequency of searching for health information using the internet. There were signifcant better overall scores in HLS among parents with higher education levels (university degree or higher with more than under high school graduated).