The relationship between health literacy and health-related quality of life among school-aged children in regional China

OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between health literacy (HL) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among primary and high school students in Nanjing, China. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected primary (graders 4–6), junior (graders 7–9) and senior (graders 10–12) high school students in 2018 in Nanjing Municipality of China. HRQoL, the outcome variable, was assessed with the validated Chinese version of Child Health Utility 9D (CHU9D) and used as continuous variable, while HL, our independent variable, was measured with the validated Chinese Students’ Health literacy Assessment Scale and treated as categorical variable (“adequate” or “inadequate”) in the analysis. Mixed-effects linear regression models were introduced to calculate mean difference and 95% confidence interval (CI) for examining the association between HL and HRQoL. RESULTS: Totally, 4388 of 4498 students completed the survey. Among these responders, the mean score of CHU9D was 0.78 ± 0.17, and the proportion of participants with adequate HL was 85.8% (95% CI = 84.7%, 86.8%). After adjustment for potential confounders and class-level clustering effects, participants who had adequate HL were observed having, on average, an elevated HRQoL score of 0.08 (95% CI = 0.06, 0.11) units compared to their counterparts with inadequate HL. Such a positive HL-HRQoL association was also identified among each stratum of participants’ age, gender and residence. CONCLUSIONS: HL was positively associated with HRQoL score among primary and high school students in China. It has public health implications that HRQoL may be improved through school-based health literacy intervention among children and adolescents in China.