Association between health literacy and COVID-19 prevention behaviors among pregnant and postpartum women

Abstract

Objective

To investigate the association between health literacy and COVID-19 prevention behaviors among pregnant and postpartum women in Japan.

Methods

In this cross-sectional, web-based, self-reported questionnaire survey, we investigated the association between health literacy and COVID-19 prevention behaviors among pregnant and postpartum women in Japan. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the association with adjustment for socioeconomic characteristics.

Results

There were 926 respondents, comprising 368 pregnant and 558 postpartum women. Women with high health literacy scores accounted for 42% of the respondents. This group had a significantly higher proportion of actively adopting preventive behaviors than the low health literacy group (33.5 vs. 25.4%, p = .008). The multivariable logistic regression analysis showed high health literacy was significantly associated with high preventive behaviors scores compared to low health literacy (adjusted odds ratio, 1.66; 95% confidence interval, 1.22–2.27).

Conclusion

Higher health literacy was significantly associated with a higher proportion of COVID-19 prevention behaviors among women who are pregnant or postpartum.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• health literacy
• postpartum
• pregnant
• prevention

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. J. Mortimer for her English language editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grants [grant numbers 17H03589, 19K10671, 19K10446, 18H03107, 18H03062, and 19H03860], the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists [grant number 19K19439], Research Support Program to Apply the Wisdom of the University to tackle COVID-19 Related Emergency Problems, University of Tsukuba, and Health Labour Sciences Research Grant [grant numbers 19FA1005, 19FG2001, and 19FA1012] and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) [grant number 2033648]. These funding organizations had no role in planning the research, analysis, interpretation of results, or report writing.