Relationship of pneumococcal and influenza vaccination frequency with health literacy in the rural population in Turkey

Abstract

Introduction: Vaccines have been shown to prevent illness, disability and death from vaccine-preventable diseases. The purpose of our study was to analyze the influenza and pneumococcal vaccination status of patients, the factors that influence the uptake of influenza/pneumococcal vaccination and the effects of health literacy (HL) on vaccination.

Materials and methods: In this cross-sectional study, demographic characteristics, comorbid diseases and the pneumococcal and influenza vaccination status in previous years were recorded for each patient. The Turkish version of the European Health Literacy Survey Questionnaire (HLS-EU-Q47) was used to assess HL.

Results: A total of 350 patients were enrolled in the study. A total of 6.3% of patients had received both vaccines. 20% of subjects were vaccinated with influenza vaccine and 11.1% of the subjects were vaccinated with pneumococcal vaccine. Overall HL was insufficient for 70.9%, problematic for 20.6%, sufficient for 7.1% and excellent for 14.2% of patients. Patients who had pneumococcal and influenza vaccination had higher disease prevention HL scores (p = 0.013, p = 0.001; respectively).

Discussion: An insufficient HL level was found to be much higher than previous studies. It was observed that an increase in disease prevention HL was associated with a rise in the rate of pneumococcal and influenza vaccination.