Application of theories/models of health education and promotion in Health Literacy research: a systematic review

Health literacy is one of the biggest and most important determinants of health in the world. The purpose of this study was to investigate studies based on models / theories of health education and health promotion in health literacy research in a systematic way.

In order to obtain Persian and English related documentation of internal databases (SID, Iranmedex, Magiran, IranDoc), foreign (ProQuest, Scopus, Web of Science, Medlib, PubMed) as well as Google Scholar search engine without restrictions based on PRISMA guideline for systematic reviews study. To avoid bias in the study, the search, selection of studies, qualitative evaluation and data extraction were done independently by two researchers. Any disagreement between the two researchers was examined by the third person and in the end, 14 articles with inclusion criteria were studied.

In this study, three studies were done before and after the semi-experience. The results showed that after the intervention, the mean of health literacy score based on the patterns / theory in the experimental group significantly increased compared to the control group. Another 11 cross-sectional studies examined the predictive power of health literacy in patterns / theories. The results showed that health literacy increases the predictive power of pattern/ theory constructs in predicting the behavior. The studies were conducted in a variety of target groups such as patients, students, nurses, health volunteers and community members, and considered a different range of people. One of the most popular patterns/ theories in the studies was the self-efficacy theory.

The results showed that the use of different patterns/ theories along with health literacy can have a positive effect on health behaviors and depending on the purpose of the study, different patterns/ theories should be used. Based on the results obtained from all the patterns/ theories, one of the constructs and theories that were presented in most studies as the most important and strongest construct was the self-efficacy construct/theory that played an important role in the adoption of human health behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to use this construct in future intervention studies and to use an appropriate and effective strategy to increase the self-efficacy in individuals.