Abstract:

Introduction:
Health literacy has been understood as a set of skills and the ability that individuals have to obtain, process and comprehend basic health information which is essential for them to make decisions related to their health.

Objective:
To analyse the effect of the sociodemographic and economic conditions on health literacy.

Methods:
A descriptive and transversal study with a sample of 508 Portuguese citizens, with an average age of 44.48 years that answered the European Health Literacy Survey in Portuguese (HLS-EU-PT), Saboga-Nunes and Sorensen (2013).

Results:
We found that the overall of participants (73.62%) have an inappropriate level of health literacy, and this was significantly lower in women, elderly, and in participants with lower education, of low social strata and low income.

Conclusions:
The results confirm a significant association between sociodemographic and economic determinants and the level of health literacy. These results reveal how important education and health literacy are in an effort to empower citizens to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Keywords:

Health literacy, sociodemographic and economic factors.