The relationship between health literacy and quality of life of elderlies with chronic diseases living in Fasa, Iran 2019

Abstract Introduction & Background.Health literacy is defined as cognitive and social skills determining motivation and ability of individuals to obtain, understand, and use healthcare information to improve and keep appropriate health. Low health literacy causes undesired health outcomes, harmful health behaviors, dissatisfaction of patients, and a higher death rate. The extant study was conducted to examine the relationship between health literacy and quality of life of elderlies with chronic diseases who live in Fasa, Iran during 2019. Methods. This cross-sectional study was done on 150 elderly with chronic diseases living in Fasa, 2019. Demographic information, quality of life, and health literacy questionnaires were employed to collect data. The gathered data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, chi-square, one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and correlation coefficient through SPSS software. Results. Mean value and standard deviation of subjects’ ages equaled 67.68±6.92 in this research. The mean value and standard deviation of disease duration in this group equaled 12.47±9.71. More than half of the studied subjects (50.7%) had inadequate health literacy. There was a significant relationship between age, sex, education level, job, and health literacy. There was a significant association between the total score of quality of life and health literacy level. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between age, education, job, disease duration, and quality of life (P