key: cord-0019675-ont0nz76 authors: Prihanto, Junaidi Budi; Nurhayati, Faridha; Wahjuni, Endang Sri; Matsuyama, Ryota; Tsunematsu, Miwako; Kakehashi, Masayuki title: Health Literacy and Health Behavior: Associated Factors in Surabaya High School Students, Indonesia date: 2021-07-30 journal: Int J Environ Res Public Health DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18158111 sha: 15e89570f51dcacf2cb9b91f39ce27424879fe3f doc_id: 19675 cord_uid: ont0nz76 (1) Background: The health behavior (HB) of adolescents develops in the school or family setting and plays an important role in their future health status. Health literacy (HL) has been identified as an important factor in modifying health behavior in addition to socioeconomic factors. health-promoting school (HPS) programs also have a significant role in providing students with the means of learning the importance of knowledge, behavior, and skills for a healthy lifestyle. (2) Method: This study aims to identify the association between HB, HL measured in comprehensive health literacy (CHL) and functional health literacy (FHL), HPS programs, and socioeconomic factors among high school students in Surabaya, Indonesia. A cross-sectional study was conducted, and 1066 students were evaluated as respondents. (3) Result: The results of multivariate analyses showed that following factors were associated with better health behavior: female, better academic performance, higher grade, higher father’s education, lower allowance, and better CHL and FHL. The strongest association for HB was gender. CHL was especially associated with handwashing, physical activity, and drug abuse. FHL was associated with smoking and drug abuse. The implementation of HPS programs did not reach an optimum level and only influenced physical activity. (4) Conclusions: The findings confirm that CHL and FHL have a significant association with several HBs. HB intervention in the HPS program is recommended to incorporate the CHL and FHL for a better health impact. Human behavior strongly related to health (i.e., health behavior; HB) is an important factor in public health because it influences individual health outcomes of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) [1, 2] . Health behaviors concerning NCDs include smoking behavior, unhealthy diet, alcohol use, and physical inactivity, while those relating to communicable diseases include washing hands after using the toilet, covering when cough/sneezing, and wearing a face mask to reduce the spread of diseases [3] [4] [5] . Many health behaviors in adults that are beneficial or become a health risk were adopted during adolescence and have continued into adult life [6, 7] . The habituation of better health behaviors in adolescence is a global imperative effort to decrease public health risks and to prevent poor individual health outcomes [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] . The formation of better HB in adolescents has also been a longstanding task for Indonesia. Indonesia is an upper-middle-income country [13] and the world's largest archipelago nation, with a total population of 268 million people [14] . Indonesia experiences a double burden in health, as the country still lists communicable diseases in its top 10 causes of death in addition to NCDs [15] . To improve this situation, a change in health effectiveness of the HPS, and hence, a clear understanding of the effectiveness of HPS is required. Under the current situation in Indonesia, this study was guided by two questions: (i) What is the effect of health literacy on better health behavior in adolescents in the Indonesian school environment when adjusting the influence of socioeconomic factors?, and (ii) What is the impact of health promotion in Indonesian schools in the practice of better health behavior? To answer these questions, we measured the HL and HB in students of multiple high schools in Indonesia and quantified HPS in the schools. Then, we analyzed the cross-sectional association among HL, HPS, and HB by considering the influence of possible socioeconomic factors on the development of HB in adolescents. Surabaya, the second-largest city in Indonesia, located in the East Java Province with an area of 326.81 km 2 and 5 administrative regions, was selected as the study site. In 2019, the population of Surabaya reached 3.094 million, with adolescents accounting for 16.14% (499,862) of the total population. There are three types of high schools in Indonesia: academic high schools and vocational high schools regulated by the ministry of education, and Islamic high schools regulated by the ministry of religion. The total number of academic high schools was 141 (22 public schools, 119 private schools) in 2019, with 62,249 students (22, 767 students in public schools, 39,482 students in private schools). The total number of vocational high schools was 103 (10 public and 93 private), with 63,048 students (21,459 public, 41,589 private) . Lastly, the total number of Islamic High Schools was 10, with 5022 students. [50] Surabaya also ranks second in Regional Gross Domestic Product by cities in Indonesia with IDR 580.756 billion (USD 41.25 million). [51] In 2019, the total workforce reached 1.747 million, of which the largest composition was academic-vocational high school education (39.13%), while diploma-university education reached 18.01% [50] . A cross-sectional study was conducted in Surabaya City with ethical approval from Hiroshima University (7 August 2019; approval register number E-1705) and permission from the Surabaya City education office (number 420/3795/101.6.25/2019). The participants were recruited using convenient cluster random sampling from high schools in five administrative regions of Surabaya City from mid-December 2019 to mid-January 2020. We first set an inclusion criterion of high schools following the characteristics of the school. The school's categories used in the present study were general public, general private, and vocational high schools under the Ministry of Education. From five different administrative regions of Surabaya City, three high schools belonging to each category were then chosen using convenient sampling. From there, using cluster random sampling, two classes were selected from two different majors from the same grade. For the public school and private high school, one class was selected from the natural and social science major, and one class was selected from two different majors in the vocational high school. The survey type was anonymous and voluntary, and the research team acquired informed consent from the parents and informed assent from the students. The selfadministered questionnaire that included informed assent was given to the participants, while the study purpose and how to participate were explained. The participants in this study had an opportunity to ask a question during the data retrieval process or cancel participation before the questionnaire was collected. Two investigators guided them during the process. The GSHS Indonesian Questionnaire 2015 was used to measure health behavior using the primary cause of morbidity and mortality among children and adults worldwide [18] . The five HB used in this study were handwashing, physical activity, smoking, alcohol use, and drug abuse. BMI (Body Mass Index) was included as a health outcome that can reflect the nutritional diet. Every response was converted to a binomial scale by giving them a value of 1 if it has benefit to health and 0 if it compromises health. BMI status was calculated from self-reported weight and height data of the respondents using the BMI formula and categorized using the WHO BMI score per age for boys and girls aged 5-19 [52] . BMI status was coded as 1: normal or 0: not normal (malnourished/overweight/obese). The handwashing variable was derived from the question, "During the past 30 days, how often did you use soap when washing your hands?" Five responses ranged from never to always, coded always (1) or never to most of the time (0). The physical activity variable was derived from the question, "During the past 7 days, how many days were you physically active for a total of at least 60 min per day? Add up all the time you spent in any kind of physical activity each day." Eight answers ranged from 0 days to 7 days, coded 1: 5 to 7 days or 0: 0 to 4 days. Smoking was measured using the question, "During the past 30 days, how many days did you smoke cigarettes?" Seven responses ranged from 0 days to all 30 days, coded 1: 0 days or 0: 1 to all 30 days. Alcohol use was measured using the question, "During the past 30 days, how many days did you have at least one drink containing alcohol?" Seven answers ranged from 0 days to all 30 days, coded 1: 0 days or 0: 1 to all 30 days. Drug abuse was measured using the question, "During your life, how many times have you used amphetamines or methamphetamines (also called ecstasy)?" Five responses ranged from 0 times to 20 or more times, coded 1: 0 times or 0: 1 to 20 or more times. HLS-EU-16 is a short version of HLS-EU-47, which was designed to measure health literacy at a community level using 16 questions that measured people's perceptions of their ability to discover, understand, judge, and apply health information to preserve and enhance their health [53] . Permission for using HLS-EU-Q16 was acquired by email from the European Health Literacy Project's coordinator [54] . This self-reported instrument uses Likert-type responses (very easy, easy, difficult, and very difficult), and can be administered using a paper-pencil questionnaire, telephone, or internet form. For scoring HLS-EU-16, responses were converted into binary, coded 1 for "very easy" and "easy," or 0 for "difficult" and "very difficult." The response "don't know" or a refusal to answer was counted as missing. The CHL score was calculated using the sum of all answers and could range from 0-16. Only respondents who answered a minimum of 14 questions were accounted for analysis. The total score was converted into 3 categories: "sufficient" for a score more than 12, "problematic" for a score from 9 to 12, and "inadequate" for a score less than 9, as recommended by Pelikan et al. [53] . The NVS (Newest Vital Sign) is an instrument that assesses people's ability to read and understand information in a health context. Nutritional labels of ice cream and sixquestion items were used to assesses people's ability to apply health knowledge to read and understand the information in words and numbers. In the study, the total number of correct answers was utilized, with equal or more than four correct answers indicating average literacy, two to three correct answers suggesting marginal literacy, and less than two correct answers indicating limited literacy [55] . Socioeconomic factors in this research were self-reported, and consisted of gender, grade, academic achievement, father's education, mother's education, allowance, and internet access. The HPS Instrument, developed by the Indonesian Ministry of Health in 2010, was used to measure the implementation of HPS in high schools. This instrument consists of three parts that measure the implementation of health education, health service, and healthy school environment through a series of checklist requirements that must be confirmed by observation and interviews with the HPS manager. There are four levels of achievement: minimum (1), standard (2), optimum (3), and perfect (4), which can be achieved by the fulfillment of all the checklist requirements in that level. The minimum level can be granted even if the checklist is not fulfilled. The score from each part is combined into one score, which is categorized as minimum (1-3), standard (4-6), optimum (7-9), or perfect (>9). The Indonesian Instrument is shown in the Supplementary Materials. Proportions were calculated from socioeconomic variables, which consisted of gender, academic performance, father's education, mother's education, allowance, and internet access. Every category of variables was constructed using conceptual theoretical consideration, which made the number of categories in each variable vary from 2 to 4. Cross tabulation was used to describe the distribution of health-promoting school, health literacy, and health behavior in the school context, while the Chi-square test was used to check the association between two variables. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows version 25 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). For each analysis, an alpha level of 0.05 was considered significant. Associations between socioeconomic variables, HPS, CHL, FHL, five HBs, and BMI among high school students were evaluated, and the crude odds ratios were calculated (i.e., bivariate analysis). Two binomial logistic regression models, one using CHL and the other using FHL, were constructed to evaluate the influence to each response variable (i.e., one of the five HBs or BMI) from predictors (i.e., sociodemographic factors HPS, and CHL or FHL) using the backward elimination method. From the 15 high schools involved in this study, 1066 students participated. After processing the data, 106 respondents (10.94%) were excluded because they did not fulfill the criteria of inclusion on the HLS-EU-Q16 Questionnaire. The characteristics of the study participants are presented in Table 1 . Among 960 students who participated, 591 (61.56%) were female. Participants were aged from 14 to 19 years old, with a mean age of 16.19 years old, and the majority of the age group were 16 years old (53.33%). Most students' academic performance was at a high level of 74.69%, with no difference between female and male students. Father's education and mother's education had a similar trend: secondary education accounted for the largest proportion (54.06% of fathers, 54.69% of mothers); while higher education comprised the second-largest proportion (35.94% of fathers, 31.25% of mothers). In general, father's education was slightly higher than mother's education. For economic status measured by students' monthly allowance, the majority of students (77.92%) had middle and low economic status (