Health Literacy: a study with high school students from brasilian schools

Abstract

The health theme is present in the official teaching documents of Basic Education in Brazil, as it is relevant for the integral training of students and necessary for Health Literacy. It is necessary to know the level of literacy of students for proposing educational guidelines. This study aims to identify the health literacy level of high school students in Brazil in aspects related to health care, disease prevention and health promotion and to analyze the relationship between LS with educational level and educational establishment frequented. This is an observational, descriptive-correlational study, with a quantitative approach in which 119 students enrolled in the 2^nd and 3^rd year of high school from two public schools in the city of Londrina PR participated. For data collection, a questionnaire was used, adapted by the researchers from the European Health Literacy Survey questionnaire. The results show that the average of the participating students has health literacy classified as problematic, being lower than in European countries where students in this same age group had a satisfactory level. The LS General index did not differ significantly between the students who attended the two year of schooling analyzed.