Links between health literacy and lifestyle in 6-8 grade school children from Kelme district

Scientific novelty and practical value. Health literacy and lifestyle (and patterns of behavior change) links are important these days for analyzing causes of physical and mental disorders among adults and children and for prevention purposes. Children health literacy is one of schools and public health office priorities. So, it’s important to analyze what theory and practices links are, in other words school children health knowledge and lifestyle links. During COVID 19 pandemic public endures a lot of changes that’s why it is important to study changes in lifestyle, so it would be possible objectively measure health literacy intervention effect for school children lifestyle, scale of negative impact and help politicians, education institutions, student parents looking for solution how to increase school children physical activity and avoid negative impact of physical inactivity. Purpose of this study is to reveal peculiarities of lifestyle and health literacy among Kelme district 6-8 grade students. Research tasks: 1. To evaluate Kelme district 6-8 grade students’ lifestyle from. 2. To evaluate Kelme district 6-8 grade students’ health literacy. 3. To identify Kelme district 6-8 grade students’ lifestyle and health literacy link. Research methods: modified short form 36 medical outcomes study questionnaire (SF-36; Staniūtė, 2007); European health literacy questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47; HLS-EU; Sorensen et al., 2013); Participants: 202 participants overall participated in study (97 (47,8%) females and 105 (52,2%) males). Conclusions: 1. Vast majority of students perceived their health as good or very good. Sixth graders perceived their health to be better than seventh and eighth grade students, boys perceived their health to be better than girls. Students who slept 8 or more hours a night perceived their health to be better than students who slept less than 8 hours a night. Lower grade students had better healthy lifestyle habits than upper grade students: falling asleep, fruit, vegetable, candy, chocolate, fast food, soda and sweet drinks consumption, breakfast eating habit, leisure time physical activity. 2. No significant differences were found between Kelme district 6-8 grade students in health literacy between grades and gender. 3. Students who had greater levels of health literacy ate less candy, fast food, drank less soda and sugar drinks, had no diet restrictions, felt good about their weight and were more physically active. The research consists of introduction, 4 parts (“literature review “, “research methodology “, “re- sults “, “discussion “), conclusions, recommendations, the list of used literature and 3 appendix . The list of references consists 125 sources.