Assessing Functional Health Literacy about Coronavirus Disease and its Association with Socio-demography of Community School Teachers in Gandaki Province of Nepal

Background: Functional health literacy enables individuals to navigate health information and resources to make health decisions to choose and to use appropriate health services. It promotes self-health care management and to cope with crisis like Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, teachers’ functional health literacy about COVID-19 study was scant. This study aimed to measure teachers’ functional health literacy and its association with their socio-demographic characteristics. Methods: This study was cross-sectional survey conducted among since June 29 to August 28, 2023. Sample size was 732. Multi-stage cluster sampling was used. Tool was developed by modified Delphi technique. Firstly, items about access to and apply health information for preventive measures of COVID-19 were developed from guidelines about COVID-19 remaining under functional health literacy framework. Then school teachers, health, language experts, and supervision were consulted for improvement. Tool consisted of socio-demography, access to and use of health information about COVID-19 prevention. Tool was piloted and correlation coefficient was calculated. Tool was self-administered at leisure period after taking informed consent from school head teachers and teachers for data collection. Data were entered and analyzed in SPSS version 27. Both descriptive and inferential statistics like Chi-square test was used to analyze data at 5% level of significance. Study proposal was approved by school of medical science, Kathmandu University Results: Results showed that 59.2% of participants had adequate functional health literacy about COVID-19. Gender, ethnicity, and involvement in social health insurance were significantly associated with functional health literacy about COVID-19. Conclusion: This study revealed that teachers have inadequate functional health literacy about COVID-19. This study results suggest interventions from authority of school education and health sector focusing gender, ethnicity and economy to promote teachers’ functional health literacy and to make school and community resilient for future pandemic.