Health Literacy of the Inland Population in Mitigation Phase 3.2 of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Portugal: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

The mediating role of product judgment and country of origin effect on health literacy and behavioral intention: A study on COVID-19 vaccines perception of Turkish consumers

This study is conducted on people in Turkey who had at least one dose of vaccination and it evaluates their differences in attitude in terms of health literacy, product judgment, the country of origin, intention to recommend and motivation to boycott. The 393 vaccine consumers were selected through convenient sampling and the data was collected through online questionnaires. The data was later analyzed by SPSS and AMOS. Normality, reliability tests and frequency analysis were conducted on the data. Afterward, a correlation was calculated using factor loadings to determine the relationship between the variables. The last was conducting the PATH analysis. Some consumers are prejudiced toward COVID-19 vaccines due to perceived distrust, hesitation, and lack of product information. Determining the prejudices of consumers, underlying causes and making inferences will provide more useful information on COVID-19 vaccines to health institutions, vaccine manufacturers, consumers and other organizations.

Education as a Predictor Factor for Knowledge of COVID-19 in Portugal

Introduction/Objective: Pandemic of COVID-19 is a major public health problem. At the time of development of this study, no specific medication/vaccine for this disease was approved. Therefore, preventive measures were the main key to control this pandemic. Health literacy (HL) is the ability to obtain, understand and use the information to make free and informed decisions about the health of an individual and to promote community empowerment. Thus, the HL of COVID-19 is important for community empowerment and the adoption of preventive measures. This article aims to understand possible predictors of HL of COVID-19, functional domain.

Material and Methods: A cross-sectional study was designed, applying the Questionnaire of COVID-19 (previously designed and submitted to a preliminary pilot testing) through an online platform from April 23 to June 23, 2020. An Index of Health Knowledge of COVID-19 Questionnaire (IHK-COV19) was constructed. Associations between independent variables (“Gender,” “Age,” “Education,” and “Risk Factor” for COVID-19 codified by ICPC-2) and HL were assessed using multivariate analyses (mixed effects models). The level of significance was set at p < 0.05.

Results: Our sample includes 864 subjects (median age, 44.33 years), mostly women (n = 619; 71.76%), undergraduate (n = 392; 45.37%) and with at least one risk factor for COVID-19 (n = 266; 30.79%). Univariate and multivariate analyses demonstrated “Age” as a negative predictor of IHK-COV19 and “Education” and “Risk Factor” as positive predictors of IHK-COV19.

Conclusions: Health knowledge regarding COVID-19 is associated with the level of education. Future interventions should consider including HL mechanisms in interventions designed to improve communication.